Crash and Burn
by Bearit
Summary: When an accident calls Eagle back to Autozam, he must come face-to-face with what was in his heart many years ago. This is a story about Eagle's life, from childhood to his heart's reconciliation... Indefinite hiatus
1. Prologue: An Accident in Autozam

**Crash and Burn  
**_Prologue_

**Bearit's Notes**: Hi all! I'm ready to write fanfic again, and here's a multi-chapter one that I have every intentions at finishing. This is a story about Eagle's past. That's all you need to know for now. Pairing-wise, well, just wait and see. This is just the prologue, which is set in the present, but the format of this fic will be flashback. Enjoy!

-

A slight breeze rustled the green leaves above their heads, cooling them after a refreshing picnic in the sun. Even after seven years of living in Cephiro, poor Eagle, skin and hair as pale as the cream Fuu used in her homemade tea, could not stand to be in the sun for too long. He managed it once, tolerance only enhanced with splashing with his good friends in one of the crystal lakes of Cephiro, but when he returned to the palace for dinner Caldina could not stop giggling, for Eagle looked "as red as a young one walking in on an attractive woman taking a shower." Sure enough, when Eagle tried to step foot in one of the hot baths later that evening, the water stung his cooked skin from head to toe.

So Hikaru made it a point from then on to keep Eagle in and out of the sun at equal lengths of time of no more than half an hour every time she and Lantis decided to do something with their friend. Even at the wedding, the first, and so far only, Earth's "Western-style" wedding Cephiro has ever witnessed (with the union of Fuu and Ferio there was a mixture of the "Western" wedding with the Cephiro traditions of coronation), the groom's side was shaded by the nearby palace woods so that Eagle would not burn up again. Geo and Zazu had been very amused.

It wasn't an Autozam thing completely, despite the polluted clouds that prevented the sunlight from ever permeating the whole of the country. Zazu could hardly tolerate the sun either, and neither could most ambassadors who visited the country whenever Geo was busy with other duties to the military and could not make it for the monthly summit of the Four Countries. But Geo was one of the few who could stand the sun because of his tanned skin, a recessive gene in Autozam and possibly, as pointed out by a friend, evidence that Geo might have Chizetan heritage.

So underneath the tree with the small wind whistling through their ears and strands of hair the three sat, Hikaru excitedly talking about the antics of her brothers back in Japan and Lantis and Eagle quietly listening, just as things should have been, had the Creator built hearts strong enough to hold two instead of one.

Eagle was no longer hurt over it. Lantis and Hikaru more than deserved each other. In the end he realized that to Hikaru, he was like another older brother, a perfect fit to her already large family, and to Lantis, well, that was a story that had written "The End" once Princess Emeraude passed away.

A loud rumbling and a large shadow slowly drifting overhead interrupted the birds' songs and dances and caught the attention of the three below, who stood and saw the lamp-shaped mobile float towards the castle. Hikaru bounced with a bright smile that rivaled the sunshine and tugged at Lantis's arm.

"Come on!" she urged. "Let's go greet Tatra and Tarta!"

Lantis smiled as he let Hikaru pull him towards the palace, and Eagle laughed as he followed behind, taking a steady pace as the two hurried along. He liked the fresh air, and he could never get enough of it, after living his entire life with gas masks and manufactured air. Being the son of the president had its advantages, he supposed, since his father did a splendid job ruling the country that no one ever thought to impeach him, and Eagle no longer had to worry about upholding his father's reputation by being the perfect son. He could stay in Cephiro for as long as he wanted to, unlike his friends; Geo had obligations ever since Eagle officially passed the command of the NSX to him, which set in motion a plethora of promotions. Geo was general now, and adviser to President Vision. Zazu's life was in Autozam; no way could he pursue mechanics in Cephiro, especially since the only technology Cephiro wanted was the technology that would contribute least to Autozam's destructive path, such as simple communication systems and the little ship Geo left behind for Eagle after he awoke from his coma, "just in case."

When, finally, Eagle entered the courtyard of the palace, where meetings always took place, Clef had only just arrived as well, and today only Tatra, Queen of Chizeta had come to Cephiro. Her elegant white royal robe with yellow, red, and orange jewels bordering the edges of the fabric touched the green grass of the courtyard gently, and her red hair flowed behind her, tamed only by the crown wrapped around her forehead. Serene as ever, she greeted everyone kindly: the Master Mage first, Ferio and Fuu next, and then Hikaru and Lantis. As Eagle approached the group, her calm features hardened, which made Eagle's heart jump.

"Eagle," she said quietly as she extended her hand, "I have a message for you, and it is imperative that you listen to it now."

He frowned and took the shiny, silver metal object from her. "If it was that important, they would have called my ship first."

"It is so important that the Foreign Minister Avant knew that I would give you the message before you would have even checked your ship. It only came to the Bravada this morning."

Eagle could feel the confused eyes of the others on him, and he stared at the communicator, the warmth permeating into his palm. "It's from Meson?" he asked quietly.

Hands clasped, Tatra nodded. "He assured me that it is personal. It has nothing to do with Autozam's foreign policy." She smiled softly. "Believe me, if it were, I would know what is said on the message. Autozam and Chizeta continue to have a peaceful and strong alliance, and your father has made no indication of any aggressive moves against other countries, especially not against Chizeta." She frowned again. "But I do not know how dire the situation is, I do not know what has happened, what is going on. All I can assure you of is that it is domestic and not international."

Eagle nodded. "Thank you." He turned to the others with a little grin. "I have to apologize, but I do believe this is something I must listen to on my own. If you'll excuse me."

He turned his heel out of the circle and walked through the opposite hall from where he entered, to the docking bay that Clef created for the convenience of the other three countries for when they visited if only because they loved bringing their biggest ships (even though Eagle was convinced that Geo brought the NSX only to appease Zazu, who continued work on the battleship ever since the FTO was lost forever in the Creator's mouth). When he caught sight of the modest little white and green ship in the corner of the docking bay, he found himself gasping for air—had he been so desperate to know what in Mokona's name Meson Avant wanted to tell him that he would run here, and had he been so anxious that during the dash he would hold his breath?

Eagle punched the numbers into the keypad of the little ship, and air puffed from the edges of the door as it slowly dropped to the linoleum floor of the bay. The only sound he heard as he wandered the short distance from the modest living quarters suited for one to the cockpit was the quiet humming of the ship starting up its computers, just enough so that Eagle could seat himself down in the pilot's seat and insert the communicator into a couple of cables on the console and listen—and watch—the message his old friend had sent.

On the square screen that popped up against the front view windows, a digitalized picture of a man with smooth chocolate brown hair and softly rugged features crackled into picture, a white military suit with green badges and patches pinned to his jacket. His face was stern, but his eyes gave away something else. Something…

Eagle braced himself for the worst. It couldn't be his father—_everyone_ would have known immediately. It couldn't be his mother… could it? A civil war had broken out? A rebellion? Tatra had promised that it was nothing foreign but what if it was, and Meson had only said that it wasn't just so Tatra would give the message to Eagle without question? Maybe it wasn't bad news. Maybe it was good news. As unlikely as it were, Eagle could only hope for that.

"Eagle Vision," the picture began, its mouth moving along with the words, "this is Meson Avant, Minister of Foreign Affairs from Autozam. I am here to tell you that last night there has been an accident."

Eagle took a deep breath. Okay. Bad news.

"There was a fire at a restaurant called the Asuna Sunfire, and the manager hadn't had the ventilation systems checked in over ten years. Naturally, there was a leak, and the smoke filtered its way to outside the dome, which due to the chemicals in Autozam's atmosphere and the chemicals in the smoke caused an explosion. Many people were wounded, some were killed. Among these casualties were—"

Meson stopped then, and he bit his lip and shifted his eyes away from the view screen. Eagle closed his eyes and turned his head down. That crazy old man. Geo kept warning him to get the ventilation system checked, but time and time again, he kept assuring them that no, no, it's fine, and it was just a scam anyway for the companies to make more money.

"Eagle," Meson began again, quietly, "I can't tell you this with a straight face." He sighed, searching for the right words. "A couple of people we went to school with were killed, several others were wounded, and I don't know how to say this, and I don't know why _I'm_ the one who has to, I mean, yeah, I'm the Foreign Minister, I have to take care of international messages from the Cabinet, but… but I'm one of the unscathed survivors… and I…"

He stopped and caught a few breaths from his speedy explanations. He took a deep breath, and slowly continued, "The old man, who owned the restaurant, you remember him, right? There wasn't any trace of him… anywhere. Last we saw him he was going into the kitchen… and next thing we knew… there was the explosion, and… Old Man Meyers wasn't the only one killed that we knew."

Meson hesitated again. "Eagle," he said, his voice clinging on to just above a whisper, "Zazu… didn't… make it."

Eagle's eyes flew open and he jerked his head to the screen. Meson had his head down, too, his shoulders trembling, and then he looked back up to meet Eagle eye-to-eye, biting his lip and tears brimming his eyes. Eagle felt much of the same.

"The… the funeral… is—" Meson took another breath. "—is soon. A couple of days. In three days. I know you haven't been back to Autozam in a while and I know you don't want to, but… you should. You should come back. If only for that day. Please, Eagle. Please."

There was a pause. The screen had yet to go blank, and Meson shifted in his seat and looked away again. His arms trembled, and he made a conscious and conspicuous effort to control his breathing.

How could that not be all?

How could Meson sit there, not turning off the transmission, after just telling him that one of his closest friends had just died because of a freak accident waiting to happen? How could Meson just sit there, after just telling him this, that there was more? What more? Old Man Meyers who always brightened up any gloomy day with his quirky habits, and Zazu Torque, the mechanical prodigy wanted everywhere for every battleship for every company but Eagle was able to have him for the NSX because Zazu chose Eagle, because Eagle and Zazu graduated in the same class, because Eagle promised Zazu a bright future, because Zazu was Eagle's first real friend… who else? Who…

"No," he muttered, widening his eyes. "It can't be. It's… it's impossible."

"That's all I was supposed to tell you," said Meson slowly, "because those two are the only casualties that pertain to you. But… there might be another one… soon."

Eagle shook his head. "No…"

"… and it's only fair to tell you, knowing how close you two are… but… Geo…"

For the first time in his life, Eagle fell, and no one was there to support him.


	2. Chapter One: The Senator's Son

**Crash and Burn  
**_Chapter One: The Senator's Son_

**Bearit's Notes**: Hi, I'm back, and with the first chapter in hand, the first of Eagle's flashbacks. The structure of this fanfic will be alternating between Eagle's memories and the present time every three chapter; that is, after every three chapters, there will be an interlude to describe the present. If that makes no sense, just stay with me, it'll make sense soon enough. And I do apologize for the depressing prologue, hopefully that didn't deter anyone from the rest of the fic.

So, here's the first chapter, the first of Eagle's memories, beginning with his childhood, carrying through to his relationship with his father, and ending with Eagle's natural born talent. Please enjoy, and please review!

* * *

At an early age, Eagle kept to himself. Being the son of a senator had its disadvantages, especially since the school he attended during his childhood had the most stuck-up, horrible, spoiled little girl across the Four Countries, who was consequently the daughter of the governor of Lexcen, a smaller city on the outer borders of the great capital city of Integra. The other students, despite any exceptions, therefore treated all children of politicians from then on with scorn. 

As soon as Chrysler Vision, a man of medium height with trim and slim features from the details of his face to the overall build of his body, with his floppy hair pale and his kind eyes shimmering a bright brown to his otherwise stern face, won the elections to enter Parliament when Eagle was seven years old, the Vision family moved out of the city Eagle had been born in and moved to Lexcen, which was only a half hour transit to the political center of Autozam. His parents wanted Eagle to grow up as normally as possible, so they refused to glamorize their reputation as an aristocratic family by living in a huge apartment in Integra. To have normal friends who couldn't buy their way out of trouble with the law, to have normal friends who had to work for all they ever wanted, to have normal friends with less than perfect family lives was the ideal. To them, having Eagle's father travel that distance to get to work in order to give their son the ideal middle-class life was a sacrifice worth jumping for.

Unfortunately, Eagle could not connect with anyone. It did not take long before the students learned that the senator's son was attending their school; with previous knowledge of the daughter of the governor who ordered everyone within a five-foot radius of her to run ridiculous chores, many of these children felt that Eagle would be the same and kept their distance, never trying to be his friend or learning more about him.

It didn't matter to Eagle; he really could have cared less. He still smiled politely and talked politely and showed consideration for those around him, but because he liked to read texts during lunch and because he preferred to nap during recess, many still put forth gigantic efforts to avoid him, even after the bully incident.

Because of the 'weird' factor accompanying Eagle throughout his childhood and his nonexistent attempts to become friends with all around him, no wonder it did not take long before he was to become the target of a particular bully who turned out not to be anything impressive. Eagle came out of the incident much disappointed.

That morning started off with a practical joke to humiliate the poor, little son of the senator boy who really needed to learn his place in his life. It was childish, really; one of the boys found a carefully constructed inflatable rubber bag that made quite the interesting noise when pressure was pressed on it. Eagle pretended not to notice it, and when the loud noise, brash noise exploded in the room many of the boys and girls giggled. Eagle stood up, picked up the cushion, and asked the boy sitting across from him:

"Is this the time when I run to the bathroom, ready to never show my face in this school again?"

The boy, a round, plump little boy with untamed black hair and pudgy cheeks, stared at him. "Um, yeah. That's what I always did last year."

Eagle frowned. "And if I don't want to?"

The boy gaped and said in a hoarse whisper, "You're not embarrassed?" He was always picked on for being smarter than even Eagle; rumor had it that he had been offered to skip ahead during the beginning of the next term.

Eagle shrugged and sat back down, tossing the rubber cushion behind him and hearing a thud when it hit the bottom of a trash dispenser. Shortly after the teacher walked in and the laughter ended, though lunchtime would prove an interesting treat.

Eagle's mother, Avella Vision, beautiful, petite, her long blonde hair always tied neatly in a bun on the back of her head and her golden eyes brilliant with naïve hopes and dreams, never sent Eagle to school with a packed lunch; it was another one of those "be like other children, sweetheart!" things, so everyday, he had to wait in line with everyone else.

On this particular day, the same day as the cushion, the beginning was mild. This one kid in his class with bright red hair and somewhere between muscular and chubby brought a couple of his lackeys waltzed right up to where Eagle stood in line and pushed in front of him. Eagle blinked at this sudden intrusion, and politely tapped on their shoulders and smiled when they turned around, doing their best to hide their smug faces beneath irritated glances. He squirmed past them just as the line moved forward, close enough to where the old lunch lady could see Eagle and the thugs behind him with just a simple glance up from the register if any commotion were to be made. The boy with the red hair grabbed Eagle's shoulder roughly and snarled.

"Hey, kid, I was here first."

"No," said Eagle, still grinning. "I was."

"Why you—" The boy moved forward with a balled hand raised up in the air, but before Eagle could possibly even think about maybe he should pretend to be afraid and cringe, the red headed boy's two friends pulled him back, shaking their heads. The boy glared at Eagle. "This isn't over yet."

Eagle shrugged as the line moved again. Well, it looked like he would not be able to sleep during recess.

In the gray, domed gymnasium where the children were permitted to run around and play, there was always a corner Eagle preferred to curl up and fall asleep until the teacher had to force him to his feet so he could go back to class. It was quieter, it was private, and it was at just the perfect temperature; despite the cold that froze the gymnasium so that the sweat of the children running and screaming and jumping and racing would not be unbearable, this little corner never received any of the cold or any of the hot. Nobody ever went over to that corner because there was nothing interesting in that corner except for the sleeping body of a senator's son.

When Eagle went there that noontime, the boys from the lunch line had already beaten him there. He frowned and approached them, which caught the attention of many little pairs of eyes and the urgent hushes of others' jokes and talks. The redhead boy saw him and turned around so that his full body was facing Eagle. He crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows; if Eagle wasn't already convinced that this boy was stupid—his oral answers in class and his scores on tests were enough to tell him this—he might have been intimidated. Maybe.

… No, definitely _not_.

"Punk, what do you want?" the boy demanded. His lackeys quickly stood on either side of the chubby kid, mimicking his movements in quite the comical fashion.

"I just wanted to get to my corner, that's all," said Eagle, putting on his best smile, knowing full well how much that would infuriate the redhead boy.

It worked. The redhead boy glowered. "Well, we were here first, so there's nothing you can do about it." His lackeys behind him smirked, believing it enough to win.

"Yes, but what do you plan to do here? There's nothing fun. You'll be really bored."

The redhead boy snorted. "So why do you come over here everyday? Because no one will play with you?" he sneered.

"Because there's nothing to do here. That's why I come here everyday."

"You're so weird." Eagle shrugged. At that point in the school year, he was used to hearing that. "I don't like that you're so weird."

"Yeah!" said one of the lackeys, which earned him a glare from the redhead boy.

"Well," Eagle chose his words carefully, "I don't like that you're intruding into my space. It's really rude, actually."

"What's rude is how you keep hogging this place for yourself!" the redhead boy growled, raising his fist again. "Just because Senator Chrysler Vision, oh, so scary, is your daddy, doesn't mean that you can get everything you want. It's not like you're the son of the _president_."

"Maybe someday," said Eagle, still grinning ear to ear, "I will be."

The redhead kid laughed menacingly. "Oh, man, and now the whole school knows. You're more stuck up than the governor's daughter! You need to learn a little lesson about life at Lexcen!"

With that last word, he swung, but Eagle easily stepped aside. The redhead kid looked at him, surprised, and then glared and swung at him again with more force, but again Eagle moved smoothly to the other side. He kept right on smiling.

"Wow," said Eagle, "I'm glad I dodged that one. I think it would have hurt."

"I hate you!" said the redhead kid, and he threw himself at Eagle, but Eagle was able to dodge it with a large stride backwards, leaving the redhead kid flailing onto the cold, hard metal floor of the gymnasium, his face and fat working as a cushion for his spine.

The onlookers first giggled and chuckled, then laughed, and then rose in an uproar, pointing at the redhead kid as he picked himself up from the floor. The teacher had finally entered the gymnasium and was pushing her way through the crowd of children, just as the redhead kid was preparing to strike again. Her face could have scared away a whole fleet of Autozam's best crew of battleships.

"HEY!" she shouted, shoving aside two onlookers to stand in-between Eagle and the redhead kid. "What is going on here? You!" She pointed at the redhead kid. "Are you beating up new kids again? I thought we had a discussion with your parents about this!"

She tugged on the ear of the redhead boy and pushed through the crowd towards her office, dragging him behind her. "I swear, Hillman—" Her ramblings were cut off by the increasing distance and finally with the slamming of her door.

The children surrounding Eagle cheered.

Ever since then, the redhead boy glared at Eagle every time they were in the same room, but he never tried anything again. The rest of the students at the school, however, though they had immense respect for him, never tried to approach him, for that incident not only tamed a bully but instilled fear into the others that maybe Eagle would turn out to be the same as the redhead kid. Perhaps that was his own fault for not saying some speech about how unfair and mean it was to pick on other people, but Eagle wasn't hurt by the incident at all. In fact, he wished that it lasted longer. He had so much fun that he walked out of the incident quite disappointed.

He was still the weird kid after that. No friends, for everyone was afraid of him, so he continued not to have the normal life his parents dreamed of him having. When they asked about how his day went, he simply told them the general idea of the day:

"It was fun."

"Did you make any friends?" That was the infamous question of his first couple weeks of school. Eagle's only response to that was a shrug and shoving some pieces of candy into his mouth.

"Eagle?" his father asked if he was home on that particular afternoon.

Eagle would look at him, put more candy into his mouth, chewed it, swallowed it, and then smiled and replied, "Yes, Dad, I did."

That was an answer enough to satisfy his mother, at least for the rest of the day. His father was too perceptive and after dinner wandered into Eagle's room to talk to him. Always something like, "I know you probably don't like the other kids as much but…" or "You could give it some effort" and then finally, the conversation just before Eagle reached the end of his days as a true child. His last few weeks before reaching the age of thirteen. This was five years after his first day at the Lexcen schools.

"Eagle?" his father asked as he walked inside the room. Eagle was sitting on his bed, reading up on the cultures of the Four Countries, but every night, when Chrysler walked in, Eagle would immediately set the flat computer aside so he could give his father the complete, undivided attention he deserved.

"Hi, Dad," said Eagle.

"I take it today is the same as always," said Chrysler, taking a seat on Eagle's bed. "No new friends, nothing interesting going on at school? That one kid hasn't started bothering you again, has he?"

Eagle shook his head. "No. I haven't seen him around in a couple of years now."

"Good, good. No one's been talking to you?"

"They've been trying. They never have anything interesting to talk about, though."

Chrysler frowned. "What do they talk about? Non-academic things?" He smirked, and Eagle hid a laugh. It was a frequent banter between father and son; Eagle liked to read up on so many little things that it was rare for him to want to talk about anything else. "Really, Eagle, how much effort have you put into it? No one wants to be friends with someone who doesn't want to be friends with them. It doesn't matter whether or not you're the son of someone important."

"It'd be different if I was the son of the president, don't you think?" Chrysler laughed.

"Nah, I think President Laguna's in for a while yet. The only thing she's _not_ doing is putting more of an effort into this pollution crisis."

"It's getting worse every day now, isn't that what the scientists are saying?"

"It is, but until Laguna's own brother starts speaking against her, no one will think of impeachment, but politics isn't our topic of discussion here, Eagle," said Chrysler, ruffling his hair a little. "Come on, now. We moved to Lexcen so that you could make some _legitimate_ friends. You need to bring someone home so your mother can get off your back about this. Or at least make up a name, a family, a history, something."

"Like an imaginary friend?"

"Yeah, like an imaginary friend! Even though it _would_ be nice if you made a friend. Not in your mind. Someone who actually _exists_. It's not healthy."

Eagle shrugged. "I prefer to be alone sometimes."

"You won't have that feeling forever." Chrysler's face brightened. "Hey, you know, I just had an interesting idea. Are you doing anything important tomorrow?" Eagle opened his mouth to respond, but Chrysler quickly overrode him. "Of course not, you have no promises to keep to anyone but your texts. How about we go to the arena?"

Eagle blinked. "The arena?"

Chrysler nodded. "Yes, yes, the arena! Down at Integra, at the Academy! It'll get you out of the house, for sure. Besides, there's these mecha combat competitions they're holding tomorrow, and politicians get a pretty awesome deal, just for the day. We get in for free, and we can go to the practice arenas where the pilots train, and they're letting kids of politicians try them out."

"Isn't that favoritism? The kind Mom doesn't like and that's why she has us living in Lexcen?" Eagle asked with a slyly arched eyebrow.

Chrysler winked. "That's why we're keeping this a secret from your mother. What she doesn't know won't kill her." He stood up from the bed and headed for the door. "Well, I'd better let you go back to your text. And as much as your mother and I keep harping you on this 'make friends' thing, don't make friends for the sake of making friends. Just be yourself, and the right friends will come along."

Eagle smiled. "Thanks, Dad."

* * *

The next morning, Chrysler told his wife that he and Eagle were going to the recreation center, where Chrysler would be meeting with a few friends and they were bringing their sons, too, which Avella believed and allowed the two to go off on their own ways. On the hover car towards Integra, as soon as the apartment complex was well out of sight and the huge domes and spiky towers of Integra hovering foreboding in the distance, Eagle turned to his father with a furtive smile. 

"Recreation center?"

Chrysler chuckled. "For some people, the arena is a recreation center. So I wasn't lying. Just manipulating the truth. You get good at it once you become a statesman."

"I thought lying was a requirement for politicians."

"Exactly."

Eagle laughed and shook his head and slipped on a heavy gas mask around his nose and mouth as the hover car exited the domes of Lexcen and into Autozam's wilderness of black clouds and charred soil. For added safety his father tapped a button that covered the hover car with a thin glass curved plate; the thicker glass had to be used for battleships and residential areas and schools and hospitals and the workplace, and for privately owned vehicles the option of the glass covering was either nonexistent or very, very thin. It was the sign of a rich man to have a hover car or a hover bike with complete glass covering, the thicker the richer.

They raced through the gates to the huge metropolis of Integra, where the hustle and bustle of the city required Chrysler to slow the velocity of the hover car to a more manageable speed where he would not have to worry to and fro about oncoming traffic. Eventually they came to a stop in a corner of the city, where several green skyscrapers surrounded a huge, wide, dark blue dome with speckled lights dotting the surface. Chrysler parked the car in one of the front rows of the vast lot and disconnected his headband wires from the car's central processing unit.

Eagle hopped out of the car and stared with a small smile at the dome before him. He read about mecha combats before and always wanted to seat himself in the leather seats of one of the huge robots and touch the cold panels, everything controlled by his intelligence and his mental power alone. Now he could see a combat live for the first time, and he knew that that was merely the first step towards becoming a wonderful, brilliant fighter.

"Come on, son," said Chrysler, and the father-son duo walked inside the domes along with the crowds that had already amassed by the entrance.

After a few minutes of pushing and shoving and showing ID cards so they didn't have to pay for tickets and seating and locating the level at where they would be seating for the matches, an exhausted Eagle and Chrysler fell into the comfortable, cushy chairs at the mid-line, mid-level, the perfect view.

It didn't take too much longer afterwards before the combats were to start, and the stadium darkened and just the center ring of the arena were lit with a blinding white light. As each fighter and mecha were taken out one by one, Eagle studied the different moves, the different tactics each used to their advantage or even disadvantage. Sometimes it was effectively psyching out the opponent; other times it was making too obvious of a false movement that ended in the fighter's failure. There were times when a mecha was just obviously stronger than another, but there were times when an older robot would turn around and beat one of the newer, state-of-the-art machines. There were bad match-ups where one opponent would stand no chance against another; there were wonderful match-ups where the two would battle for lengths of time.

Near the end, Eagle saw his father's floppy white hair obscuring his eyes as his head drooped, his arms crossed, sometimes sharply bringing his head back up in order to pay more attention. Eagle smiled to himself, and once the competitions were over and the stadium lights turned on so that the spectators could get out without tripping over themselves, Eagle shook his father awake.

"Oh, what, what?" Chrysler started and then looked around. He frowned. "It's over?"

Eagle nodded. "Yeah, it was pretty amazing, and it went by so fast."

"Who won?"

"I think one of the new GXE models," said Eagle. "Even though I didn't think that those models were anything impressive."

Chrysler chuckled, shrugged, stood up, and stretched. "You never know, they may end up being some of the best of the best our army has to offer. Just wait and see. It just takes time, that's all. Time, and a good mechanic." Eagle grinned, and the two made their way out of the audience seating of the battle arenas. "Did you enjoy yourself?"

"Yes, Dad, I did. Thank you," Eagle answered. "Can we go down to the practice arenas now?"

"You really want to go?" Eagle nodded. Chrysler's lips curled satisfactorily. "All right, let's go! Just so you know, a lot of people will be down there, and some of them may be students of the academy, so just be careful, all right?"

"Dad, when have I ever had to worry about being careful?"

Chrysler shook his head. "You need to be more careful than you give yourself credit for. I think you're too reckless sometimes."

"When have I ever been reckless?" asked Eagle with a smile.

Chrysler sighed, and before long they found themselves in the basement of the battle dome, where a swarm of people gazed at some of the models or tried out the stations of virtual simulators along the outer perimeter of the basement practice arenas. In the center, of course, were two robots tied to the walls and ceiling; these were real, ready for combat mechas, Eagle knew. Just detach the cords and they were perfect. They were the real things, just used for mere practice. He could not tear his eyes away.

"Hey! Chrysler!"

The older man turned towards the source of the voice, and a young man with dark brown hair waved his hand, ushering him over. Chrysler indicated to Eagle to follow, so he did.

"Maverick, hi," said Chrysler as the two shook hands. "I haven't seen you in a while. Your fiancée doesn't talk about you much to me anymore."

The man laughed and nodded. "She wouldn't. From what I've heard things have been pretty stressful in the Senate, so much so that I often end up stuck watching her son overnight. At least he and my boy get along fine."

"Always a good thing, they'll be brothers soon."

"Yeah, hey, how's Avella?"

Already bored, Eagle's eyes wandered towards the two mecha again, and he crouched behind his father and was able to run into the flow of the many already circling the central arena. As soon as he lost sight of his father, he pulled himself away from the crowd and found an immobile spot near the surrounding fences. He glanced between the two mechas, and then dashed along the fences towards one of them, he didn't care which, and as soon as he got there he climbed the platforms that led to the cockpit of one of the mechas.

He went to the open hatch of the cockpit and peered inside to make sure no one was in it; after noticing an empty seat in front of the controls, Eagle glanced over his shoulder. If anybody had noticed him climb the ladders nobody cared enough to stop him, so he slyly grinned and slipped inside, hopping comfortably into the dark blue leather chair.

Off to the side he noticed a pair of black shades with two wires at the top attached to the upper console of the view screen, and he attached the jutted input devices at the edges of the lens to his jeweled headband. The lens beeped, and the wires from both sides of Eagle's headband popped out. He grabbed one pair and attached it to the most logical holes at the bottom console and repeated the same action for the other pair. The lens beeped wildly as displays with letters and numbers appeared before him, and the view screen transformed from a blank slate to a view of the other mecha in front of him.

"So that's how it works," said Eagle, and he tapped on a couple of the buttons on the console, and the mecha moved in a motion of starting up and configuring with Eagle's mind. The lens beeped again, twice, as a conclusion, and the robot moved accordingly to what he wished for it to do. He smiled; what was all the fuss about training for, other than perhaps tactical training? This was simple!

Just as soon as Eagle allowed the robot to step forward in a rather choppy manner—it attributed it to the many cables on the outside—the mecha's eyes straight ahead glowed bright yellow and moved as well. Eagle smiled. A battle already? The cadets of the Academy certainly were quick for a challenge.

The other mecha soon charged, and Eagle quickly blocked and counterattacked. He landed an easy hit to the mid torso of the robot's body, although the thick cables stopped the motion short, and a large thud resounded through the earpiece of the headset Eagle wore.

_Direct hit_, the lens read, _restart simulation. TVR, one, NSU, zero._

The other mecha, apparently the NSU, retreated, and Eagle pulled his mecha, the TVR, back likewise. Best of three? Eagle wondered, ready to attack again. Or maybe he would face a new opponent. The latter would not be true, since quickly afterward and without much of a pause, the NSU attacked again. Eagle managed to dodge, but this time when Eagle tried to counter, the NSU blocked and took another shot. Eagle dodged this one, as well, and a crackling voice over the speaker in his headset demanded:

"Pilot in simulator TVR, state your name. Repeat, pilot in simulator TVR, your identification code does not show up in our database. Please state your name…"

Eagle attacked again, briefly wondering if this was pure hand-to-hand combat (in the competitions some had used weapons, but it didn't seem like the simulators were equipped), and he found a couple of seconds for a breather in the middle of the battle so that he could look for the mute button. Before he could press it, he glanced up in enough time to see the NSU attack again, and he jumped above the mecha and thrust the TVR's arm in the back of the NSU. The simulation ended with the blinking words _TVR wins_ and the two robots being automatically moved back to the original positions.

Eagle pulled off the headset, pleased with his victory, and as the hatch of the cockpit opened he climbed out, just to peer down the edge of the top platform and see _everyone_ staring. Closest to the platform was his father, whose jaw dropped at the sight of Eagle exiting the simulator. Chrysler, however, quickly smiled and gave Eagle a thumb up, which Eagle smiled down and waved at his father. He climbed down to the bottom, where a red-faced, well-built officer with chestnut hair and red eyes glared at him.

"What on Autozam do you think you were _doing_!" he demanded. He pointed at a poorly constructed sign attached to the far pole of the platform racks. "'No citizens allowed,' how could you have not seen it?"

Eagle shrugged. "Well, it's not conspicuous enough."

"You…"

Just then a young boy, tanned and slightly muscular with spiky black hair, rounded the corner and stopped just behind the officer. He swallowed his panting and grinned a lopsided grin.

"Hey, I was the pilot of the NSU over there—"

The officer rounded on his heel and put both fists onto his hips. "And you! You should have known better! I don't care if you're just a freshman…"

Chrysler came by Eagle's side and put a finger over his lips and grabbed Eagle's upper arm and pulled Eagle through the crowd, and the two ran out of the training area, Chrysler laughing all the way.

"If I wasn't already lying to your mother," he said through chuckles as soon as they were out of the training room, "I'd say let's never, ever say what just happened in there. Eagle, you were brilliant! I heard you fought the strongest fighter in the freshman class of the Academy, whose a whole year older than you, and you never even seen a mecha live before today. Brilliance, Eagle. Absolute, sheer _brilliance_!"

Eagle smiled. "Thanks, Dad."

Chrysler slung an arm around Eagle's shoulders and led him upstairs. "Let's get out of here before the headmaster finds out about this. I hear that he's a real stickler on details like this."

As the two made their way up the long stairs towards the ground level, Eagle looked up at the window ceilings of the glass dome, now open due to the conclusion of the competitions from earlier in the day. Between the cracks of the black clouds he saw a few streams of white light piercing through, and Eagle had to narrow his eyes due to the brightness of the light. He paused in the middle of the stairway, which caused his father to pause, and just kept staring up towards the sky.

"That's Cephiro, isn't it, Dad?"

Chrysler looked up too and smiled. "Yeah, that's Cephiro all right. The place where your will determines everything, the most peaceful country in the whole world, the most perfect country in the whole world. Autozam strives for that, you know."

Eagle nodded. "Yeah, I know."

"As soon as the pollution clears, you know we'll be there, right? We aren't so different, our two countries."

Eagle nodded in vague agreement, and the two continued upstairs. Integra was the only place in the whole of Autozam where Cephiro could be seen with the naked eye, and Eagle knew that this was only just the beginning of the rest of his life.


	3. Chapter Two: A New President

**Crash and Burn**  
_Chapter Two: A New President_

**Bearit's Notes**: Yay! This was a hard chapter to write, but I got it done, and I should be on a steady roll from here on out because then is when the whole story will actually begin. Meaning, in the next chapter, expect to see a _very_ familiar face. But for now, enjoy the return of two of the unnamed characters from the last chapter, and the transformation of Eagle's life. Have fun, and please review!

* * *

A couple of weeks after Eagle and his father had snuck out to Integra behind his mother's back, the family sat in the main room of the apartment over simple dinners of processed food, for Avella Vision had put forth a lot of energy in tidying up the apartment all day and had none left to cook any of the extravagant food she normally fixed; it was usually the only thing in the Vision household that even remotely resembled an aristocratic lifestyle. Chrysler Vision had said nothing as he slipped into his seat and started toying with the food for a little while, before picking up his fork and chomping on the bland brown slice of meat. 

Eagle frowned at this peculiarity. Usually his father was keen on even the smallest details, and for the particularly insignificant ones, such as the change of type of food Avella served for dinner, were the ones that he would make a joke or lighthearted comment about. Today, nothing.

If his mother noticed anything she gave no indication and simply turned on the cubic television drifting in the center of the room, where the daily news were broadcast all across Autozam around the time most would be eating dinner.

"So, how was work today?" asked Avella, smiling sweetly at her husband as she sat at the dinner table. He did not answer; another peculiarity to which Avella _did_ notice. "Chrysler? Chrysler!"

"Hm?" Chrysler, disinterested, glanced up from his plate.

Avella glared. "How was work today?"

"Oh, fine, fine," he said with a wave of his hand.

Avella kept glaring at him, but he scarcely noticed as he turned his attention back to his plate, twirling some noodles into his fork idly. She said nothing more and instead sighed helplessly, and Eagle knew better than to push his father further.

"Eagle, honey," Avella said through gritted teeth, clasping her hands on top of the table. "How was school?"

Eagle smiled. "It was fine."

"Fine," said Avella, clearly annoyed. "Of course it was fine. Anything interesting happen?"

"No, not really. I passed a test."

"Uh-huh." The words behind it spelled dangerously, _I should hope so, you don't do anything else with your time_. "Any new friends?"

Eagle sighed. Even after five years! Instead of answering, Eagle shoved a forkful of whatever he had been toying with into his mouth and chewed as slowly as he could. His mother was obviously not very happy, and Eagle decided that the best way to answer this dodgy question was to not, unless he wanted to lie, like his father had suggested only a couple of weeks prior. Maybe, if only for tonight, just to calm his mother down, creating an imaginary friend wasn't such a bad idea.

Eagle swallowed his food, but before he could open his mouth, Avella stood from the table and turned on her heel and walked back into the kitchen. Chrysler did not budge, did not speak, and Eagle was left with an unsettled emotion rising up his throat.

He turned his attention to the broadcast, idly listening to the nothingness of what the skinny gray-haired man had to say. A little special on one of the import shops in Sonata, one of the richest suburbs in Autozam just on the other side of the capital city of Integra, a recent burglary in "The Lynx," the ghetto of Autozam that was south of Integra, and another comment about the pollution crisis. Ho hum. Autozam was not a particularly exciting place.

Just as Eagle was about to focus more on his food again, the gray-haired man said, "And now, for a special announcement from Professor Renault Laguna of the FSO."

Avella reentered the main room, standing in the doorway with her arms crossed, her face covered with curiosity. Chrysler's head slowly rose to look at the television, his bright brown eyes wide and his eyebrows wrinkled. Eagle frowned and paid discreet attention to what the renowned scientist had to say.

Renault Laguna, a tall, lanky man with his dull purple hair pulled back in a short ponytail, stood at a gray, metal podium with dark green drapes behind him, his white lab coat blending in with the typical colors of the Autozam government. He wore spectacles thick enough to shield his eyes, and rumor had it that he only wore them as a defense against the women of the public because with his brilliant eyes and his prodigious brain mixed all together with his good looks, he could never get anything done. What was most peculiar was that his older sister, President Dauphine Laguna, was everything short of attractive, which merely acted as one counterargument to the rumor. No matter, really, for Renault Laguna was married to science.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, his quiet, bass voice amplified by the microphone, "as we all know, the pollution of our atmosphere has been increasingly worsening for as long as any of us can remember.

"In the past week, our data has shown that the rate of increase has expanded exponentially, and we of the FSO have estimated that in less than fifteen, no, ten years, our domes will no longer be suitable shields against these poisonous fumes.

"The FSO has been working feverishly for the past twenty years to find a cure for this smog that plagues our beloved land, but we currently have little resources to quicken our efforts to preserve our way of life. That is why I stand before all of you today to request from the president, my sister, more funding to save our dying land."

He bowed and exited the stage, and the screen flipped back to the gray-haired man.

Before anyone could say anything in the Vision apartment, Chrysler threw his head back and guffawed. Eagle and his mother exchanged confused glances.

"That sneaky little brat!" he howled as his face reddened and tears fell from the corner of his eyes. "Going on national broadcast! I can't imagine how the president can say no now!"

* * *

Eagle and Avella learned from Chrysler later that Renault Laguna had approached Parliament three days ago about increased government funding for the efforts towards curing the pollution crisis, and Parliament had approved a bill to do so in a mere matter of hours; by the time it reached the Grand Mansion for President Laguna's approval, she promptly vetoed it, for reasons she explained to no one but her Cabinet. 

Chrysler had stood by Renault Laguna's side as he debated with his sister, and for the longest time Chrysler was worried that Renault would speak out against Dauphine, though for reasons Eagle could not understand at the time. Chrysler had only explained to his wife and son, "There's a lot of opposition out there." Apparently there was more going on in the government of Autozam than even the family of a senator was allowed to know.

The next day, around dinnertime again, on national broadcast, the gray-haired man returned. Chrysler had not returned home for dinner that night, and Avella watched the news frantically, hoping that nothing had happened during the transit from Integra to Lexcen.

Again, nothing interesting. A bootlegger was caught in "The Lynx," the lovely suburb of Sonata was showcasing a professional dancer from Chizeta all of next week, tickets on sale now, and, finally, the gray-haired man looked at the screen grimly, his lips pursed.

"Current news on the pollution," he said slowly. "President Laguna has denied the FSO more funding due to limits of the budget and the status of the economy, claims a Grand Mansion spokesperson. The FSO has therefore announced a no-confidence doctrine against the president, led by none other than her own brother. More details on how Parliament will react to this shortly coming."

Avella's jaw dropped, and Eagle widened his eyes.

Sure enough, once the broadcast was over with no news whatsoever about Parliament's reaction, Avella cleaned up the dishes and wrapped Chrysler's untouched plate in a protective wrap and put it in the refrigerating unit. Eagle retreated to his room for the night and pulled out a text about the Sao dynasty of Fahren but found that he could not concentrate.

President Dauphine Laguna, as far as Eagle could tell, was not a bad president, and she really tried her best to provide for the well being of her people. Poor people from "The Lynx" were actually being able to go through some of the more expensive academies in Integra, and the crime situation in "The Lynx" had been worse before she was elected into office. Only one crime a day was reported on the evening broadcasts; it used to take up half the entire broadcast.

Eagle's father had not yet been elected into Parliament at the time, and the family was still living in Sonata, but Eagle remembered it. He remembered the decrease in reports since Laguna took over to recently, and it was one of the things Chrysler Vision would boast about to his family. After all, once he claimed a seat in Parliament, there was a rapid decrease to the crime rate in "The Lynx."

That was back when the pollution crisis was the least of everyone's worries. Now that Autozam had claimed an isolationist policy—one that Chrysler was not fond of—and the domestic problems were finally solved, everyone started realizing that their environment was slowly dying. President Laguna made her first mistake when she waved it off as something that could not be helped.

After Eagle showered and before he climbed into bed for the evening, the door to the apartment opened and shut, and Eagle peered out of his bedroom door and down the main hall to see his father at the doorway, his mother greeting him with a peck on the cheek and golden eyes of concern. Chrysler noticed Eagle then and waved his hand. Eagle cautiously stepped out of his room and approached his parents.

"Well," said Chrysler, nodding with pursed lips, "it's official." He sighed. "Laguna is being impeached."

Avella gasped, but Eagle did not even blink.

"There were a lot of factors that went into it," he said, "and we all unanimously agreed that she had to go. She's been around for seven years now anyway, and no president yet has lasted for more than eight years. It was her time."

"Oh, honey," said Avella as she wrapped her arms around his waist.

Eagle kept staring at his father, waiting for more. This could have waited until the morning, and this was something that Eagle and his mother could have tolerated listening to the morning news about, so his father had to be holding back something. Chrysler noticed Eagle's gaze and loosened his grip on Avella.

"Yeah, there's more," he said, and Avella pulled away. "The trials are expected to take about three months. That's how long the new candidates have to prepare their campaign, and tonight we announced who we were going to nominate as candidates.

"Avella, Eagle, I am one of them. I am a candidate for the next president of Autozam."

* * *

Autozam politics were messy, in Eagle's opinion. A president could be in for as long as Parliament deemed necessary, and then a function of Parliament, the Senate, would hold the trials to determine, in theory, whether or not the president had to go. The practice, however, called for the trials if only to give the candidates, nominated by everyone in Parliament and could only be someone from the Senate, time to prepare and run their campaign. The morning that Parliament announced their decision about the president would be the day the citizens of Autozam voted. 

In many ways, Autozam's government was unstable, but at least the president could not pass laws without the approval of the Senate after being thoroughly constructed by Parliament.

The Senate, in short, was the elite function of Parliament. While the citizens voted for whoever they wanted to vote for to be in Parliament, the members of Parliament determined who they would promote to the Senate; Chrysler had been one of the very few in Autozam's history to go straight from Parliament to the Senate in a matter of two weeks. Perhaps it was his charisma, or his records from school, or his prior experiences elsewhere that Chrysler rarely spoke about.

Of course, it would be during these three months of campaigning when Eagle would understand why. A lot of Chrysler's past had something to do with it, more than everyone in Parliament was led to believe, and more than Eagle would have liked to know about his father, and more than Avella would have wished to remember.

That morning, the list of nominated candidates was extensive (a lot of opposition indeed!), and for a while it seemed like nothing special that Eagle's father was one of them. There was one name that caught Avella's attention, however, and during breakfast that morning she turned to Chrysler with a raised eyebrow.

"Kia Avant?"

Chrysler nodded. "She's well respected in Parliament; of course she was one of the nominees."

"Uh-huh." Somehow, Avella did not sound pleased.

He sighed. "Avella, if it wasn't for Kia, I don't think I would have gotten to where I am now." He smirked playfully. "Besides, she's getting married to Maverick next week. What, are you jealous?"

Avella pouted. "Why would I be?"

"She's my opponent now, Avella. An enemy if you will."

"Yes, I know, I know."

Chrysler chuckled and went back to his breakfast bowl, and Eagle smiled at the little banter between his parents. He thought nothing of it all day, or for the next few weeks for that matter, as candidates refused the nominations, changed their minds, or just fell out of the spotlight.

In the middle of the second month of the campaigns, three remained, including a woman named Fulvia Cirrus, a headstrong woman in her mid-forties who was entirely too aggressive for her own good, Kia Avant, and of course, Chrysler Vision himself. Avella smiled a fake smile and congratulated Chrysler; somehow, even after Kia married Maverick Torque, a friend of the Vision family, Avella could not sit comfortably at her chair at breakfast or dinnertime, and she would take her anger out on even one speck of dust that decided to loom over the top of one of the silver metal cabinets where nobody but Chrysler could reach anyway. And it really didn't matter, since Chrysler was so busy with campaigning that he was hardly ever home anymore.

The Vision household during those three months had never been cleaner, or emptier.

One day, sometime after school had let out for the week, Eagle went past his mother and the carpet-cleaning gadget with a short, "I'm home" and headed straight for his room. The soft hum of the carpet cleaner paused as Eagle passed, but by the time he opened the door to his room the noise resounded again. He looked at his mother, who had her back towards him, and she said not a word, and had not said a word to him. He frowned but decided that it would be best if he left her alone.

He switched on the lights and pulled off his white cloak and set it on a nearby chair. He stared at his bed for a little bit, and then smiled and switched the lights off and pulled off his headband and set it down with his cloak, and it landed with a muffled metal clank as the blue orb landed face first on the chair. The day had been more than a little exhausting, and Eagle shoved off his metal boots and curled up in his blankets on his bed.

Before he could fall asleep, however, the door to his room opened and the white lights illuminated the room. He let out a groan as he sat up to see his mother in the doorway with pursed lips and hard eyes.

"Eagle," she said slowly, "what are you doing?"

Eagle was puzzled. He always either napped or studied after school, and his mother knew it. "I was thinking about sleeping for a little while. Why? Did you need help with something?"

Her features did not change, and she brushed a loose strand of blonde hair away from her face. "You should go out and be with your friends," she said. "It's not healthy being inside all the time, by yourself."

Eagle shrugged. "I don't really mind, though."

She stared at him, her intense gaze burning into Eagle's eyes. He cringed and pulled on his boots. Maybe napping today wouldn't be such a good idea.

"Mom? Is there anything I can help you with?" he asked again. There was something more to Avella's unnaturally unstable fuse, and he refused to see what happened when it blew up on him. "I can make dinner or something, you can relax—"

"Eagle, you need to get out."

Eagle gaped. "What?"

"Come back after dinner."

"But—" Eagle began, but as soon as Avella turned spun on her heels, Eagle knew the battle had been lost. He put everything on again and switched off the lights to his room, and as he exited the room he saw the retreating back of his mother as she swerved into the kitchen.

Eagle sighed and made his way towards the entrance to the apartment, and before he left, he glanced behind his shoulder and closed his eyes in defeat. "I'm sorry, Mom."

It was the first apology Eagle ever made, and it was the only time he wasn't sure why.

* * *

Eagle found a virtual reality center in downtown Lexcen, and he spent his entire time out of the house battling against well-seasoned soldiers, and winning. Nobody wanted to believe that a kid could blow them out of the water like that, and Eagle didn't have the heart to tell them that he wasn't putting his all into it; his mother all but shoving him out the door distracted him too much to put effort into the combats. 

Eventually the owner of the virtual reality center asked him to leave, too, in fear that the soldiers, who were all enlisted and never went through the Academy, would get all riled up and terrorize the place. Eagle graciously left and boarded his green and yellow hover bike and headed back to the residential district. The gray-haired man on the big screen television in the center of downtown talked about some little insignificant details as a typical feel-good closure to the evening—all the campaign jargon must have occurred while Eagle was busy on his fifteenth round—so his mother must be willing to let him back into the apartment. If not, no matter, he could always get out his gas mask and travel to Integra, go to where the real mecha combats were. The virtual reality mecha were hardly satisfactory.

He zoomed through the doors of the residential areas, and a voice calling out his name made him pull his wrists back and push his foot onto the other pedal. As the hover bike slowed to a stop, he threw his head over his shoulder and saw a boy no older than him, slightly overweight with unruly black hair, waving his arm with a bright smile. Something about him seemed familiar, and Eagle waited for the boy to run over to him.

The boy stopped beside the bike and put his hands on his knees, panting heavily. "I thought it was you," he said.

Eagle said nothing. He knew the boy and the boy obviously knew him, but he could not have been one of his typical classmates who sat as far away as they possibly could from Eagle during lunch, because here this boy was, actually approaching him without fear or apparent agenda.

The boy stood up straighter, his attire olive green of a cadet at the military academy. He had one yellow stripe on his left sleeve indicating that he was a first-year, but no one from the military academy knew Eagle's name. Two months ago, Chrysler had made sure of that when he pulled Eagle out of the adoring crowd that day.

The boy grinned, his heavy breathing gone, and said, "You don't remember me, do you? I'm Aston, Aston Martin. From your class when you first moved to Lexcen."

Eagle dug through his memories momentarily. First moved to Lexcen, well, there wasn't much difference between then and now, except for the bully incident, which made everyone merely wary of Eagle to respecting but fearing him. Then again, Eagle knew about this bully from an incident even before he started to bother him, there was a plump boy who sat across from him…

"Oh, yes," said Eagle, smiling politely. "I remember you. You're the one who always got picked on for being smarter than everyone else. You really did skip a level; everyone thought that was just a rumor."

The boy, Aston, nodded sheepishly. "Yeah, that's me, alright."

"You're in the military academy now?"

"Yeah, I'm taking the political science course. You can't get very far in politics nowadays without having some military background, you know."

Eagle nodded. "I know."

Aston laughed. "Of course you do. I'm working with your father right now on his campaign. Normally freshmen aren't allowed to do this but they told me that I was an exception," said Aston with a wide grin. "Pretty amazing, huh?"

"It sure is." Funny how his father wouldn't mention it, but perhaps a helper in the campaign would not merit much comment, especially since Eagle never learned the boy's name until just now so Chrysler would not see any point in telling him about it. It just bothered Eagle a little that this boy spent so much more time with his father than he could.

"You wanna know the ironic thing?" Aston pressed. Eagle was awed by how much this boy had changed from the meek pushover everyone remembered him to an energetic cadet of the military academy, the strictest academy in all of Autozam. "My roommate is Senator Avant's son." He laughed again, and Eagle let out a chuckle. "I have to say it was awkward for a little bit but I don't think it will be anymore."

"Why do you say that?" asked Eagle, still very amused.

Aston shook his head and raised his eyebrows. "Because Senator Avant is running with your father now. Remember? They should have said it on the evening broadcast, it's a real big deal, since my roommate's mother agreed to be your father's vice presidential candidate."

Eagle blinked. "What?"

Aston frowned. "It _wasn't_ on the evening broadcast?"

"I… didn't watch the evening broadcast."

"Huh." Aston didn't look too surprised. "Well, yeah, they are. I mean, no one really likes Senator Cirrus, and Senator Avant and Senator Vision are the two most popular candidates, and this move would make defeating Senator Cirrus that much easier since your father and Senator Avant have many of the same views on issues." Aston grinned. "I think the voters' choice has gotten a lot easier now. It was a smart tactic on your father's part."

Eagle forced a smile. "I suppose so."

Or was it? Somehow Eagle got the feeling that his mother would be less than pleased. Maybe his father had called her before Eagle came home from school to tell her this decision? It certainly would explain a lot about what had happened earlier in the afternoon.

"Well," said Eagle, "it was nice seeing you again. Hopefully we'll see each other soon."

Aston nodded. "I'm sure we will."

The two boys exchanged a small wave of temporary farewell, and Eagle sped back towards the Vision apartment, debating all the way whether he should wait before going home or just to go straight inside. It was well after dinnertime by now, so his mother should have little complaint, but if Aston, a member of Chrysler's campaign team, was in Lexcen and most likely on his way back to Integra, that meant that Eagle's father was back in Lexcen too and most likely already home. Did he really want to go back to a home with tension thicker than the glass domes shielding citizens from the hazardous fumes of Autozam's atmosphere?

Eventually, he decided that he could not wander the residential domes forever, especially for a boy his age and with a father running for a very prestigious position in Autozam's government, and he parked the hover bike in the shed designated for his apartment and wandered up the stairs to the doorway of his home. He paused and listened for anything that may be going on inside, but there was dead silence. Worried, Eagle slowly pushed the door open, and only the kitchen light was on and muffled voices, the most audible one deep, could be heard. Eagle snuck towards the entryway and kept his back towards the wall, straining his head so he could listen more closely.

"Avella, I wouldn't betray you like that."

"You did before!" Eagle heard his mother's voice sob-choked, and Eagle stole a peek into the kitchen to see her sprawled on the floor, his father hovering over her, comforting her with a steady arm around her shoulder. He quickly spun back around, not afraid that his parents would see him but rather feeling intrusive to his parents' privacy.

However, the topic of conversation intrigued Eagle, and he knew how wrong it was, but he wanted to know—no, he needed to know, because this was affecting him just as much as it was affecting both his parents.

"You know I'm apologizing for the rest of my life for that," said Chrysler. "But I wouldn't betray you like that again. I can't betray my best friend like that, and I wouldn't dare betray our son like that."

"So then why?"

"It's a purely professional decision for the betterment of Autozam."

"Don't spew crap like that out to me. I'm not a voter, I'm your _wife_."

"You have nothing to worry about, Avella. I promise you. What happened fifteen years ago was a stupid mistake. Kia didn't even want to run with me as a vice-presidential candidate."

"But she ended up agreeing, didn't she?"

"Because you said you had no problems with it. Why did you lie if her being my vice president should we win bothered you this much?"

"That's what you wanted to hear, wasn't it?"

His father sighed. "No. I called before anyone had their hearts set on the decision. Nobody was expecting you to agree to it. I wanted to hear your true feelings, Avella, that's why I made sure to call before it was too late to go back." His mother hiccupped. "You know, it's still not too late—"

"No, no," said his mother more quietly, so much so that Eagle had to strain to listen. "It's too late now. It'll be bad publicity if you went back on that decision. Stick with it." She laughed, and then her voice turned serious again. "If you promise never to… go back to Kia, I promise to be stronger about this."

"I would die before I hurt you again."

Eagle slowly and silently drifted away from the entryway of the kitchen and walked into his room, undressing himself so that he could be comfortable as he slept for the night. He needed to take even more measures tonight, because what he just heard, he knew, would haunt his nightmares and daydreams for a long, long time.

Just as Eagle climbed into bed, the door opened ajar, and in poked his father's head, eyes blocked with concern. When he saw Eagle he relaxed and stepped inside without turning on the light, and Eagle continued to sit up, staring at his father as steadily as he possibly could.

"Hey, son," his father said. "You okay?"

Eagle nodded and smiled. "Yes, Dad. I couldn't be better."

A small, uncomfortable grin tugged at his father's face. "That's good."

There was a long silence in which father and son knew not what to say. Eagle couldn't ask his father about what he had overheard; and his father couldn't act like Eagle heard, if he knew that Eagle was eavesdropping.

Finally, his father sighed and exited the room. "Good night, Eagle."

"Good night."

As Eagle laid down and pulled the covers over his head, he knew, and was forever disillusioned.

* * *

Another month passed, and terse conversations around the main room dining table sparked between husband and wife, mother and son, and father and son. They were mundane, they were abhorrently normal, and they were impersonal. Eagle found himself wanting to get out of the apartment more and more, a real turn around from only a few weeks previous. Eagle had to pretend that he knew nothing, while his mother and father would pretend that nothing was wrong, there was no past to speak of, and that they had the most stable and perfect family life of all of Autozam. 

The last month of the campaign was hell in the Vision household; it became a regular thing, every evening, sometime near the end of the broadcast, that the owner of the virtual reality center would turn Eagle out, leaving the boy nothing to do but to wander the streets of Lexcen on his hover bike.

It all came to an end one day, when Eagle woke to the gray-haired man announcing over the morning broadcast that the Senate had decided to send Dauphine Laguna packing. All day long, the elections would take place.

In the evening, when the owner turned Eagle out of the virtual reality center again with a pat on the shoulder and a wink inviting him to come again, the gray-haired man was swaying back and forth on the big screen television, anxiously awaiting the results of the election. Many hover bikes and hover cars halted in mid-air, and every pedestrian stopped in their tracks and turned their heads up to the screen. Eagle did the same; finally, the gray-haired man sighed a breath of relief.

"Citizens of Autozam," he said with a small smile on his face. "The poll booths have closed fifteen minutes ago, and the results have been tallied. Our new president is Chrysler Vision."

Everyone in the center of downtown Lexcen cheered. Eagle smiled an ironic smile, and from the corner of his eye he noticed a familiar head of red glowering at the crowd. Eagle laughed to himself quietly and approached him, this redhead boy, who recognized him immediately and braced himself with both fists by his hips angrily.

"I see you remember me," said Eagle. The redhead boy kept glaring. "But I don't ever seem to recall formally introducing myself.

"My name is Eagle Vision, and I am the son of the president."


	4. Chapter Three: Child Prodigy

**Crash and Burn**  
_Chapter Three: Child Prodigy_

**Bearit's Notes**: … my Autozam boys want my soul, I swear. I can't believe I got this one done as quickly as I did. Eagle, if I fail my classes this semester, it's all your fault. Anyway, in comes, for once, a canon character. Finally, right? This is one of the very few happy chapters of this fanfic, so enjoy it while it lasts. Because next time is the interlude. And the interlude will definitely _not_ be happy. I swear I love my Autozam boys, really!

And a disclaimer, before I get too carried away: I do not, unfortunately, own Magic Knight Rayearth. If I did, I would make sure that my Autozam boys (and Lantis!) got their own series. Really.

* * *

The Grand Mansion, Eagle thought, was nothing spectacular. Yes, it was the hugest home in all of Autozam, so much so that it merited it's own dome in the middle of Integra, and the interior design was exquisite with lilac walls and many strategically placed bright green plants, some artificial, some very much real. Everything that could be framed, from the photographs of past presidents dressed in either white or green to mirrors, was framed in gold, the rounded corners designed with a mechanical flair. Silver metal tables of many shapes and sizes lined the walls of the main hallways of the Mansion, and there was always people bustling in and out of the rooms with a sense of urgency. 

Eagle's bedroom itself shared many of the same qualities of the rest of the Grand Mansion with its light purple metal brick with an intruding line of white through the center, a ridiculously huge mirror that was three times Eagle's width and took up the entire height of the room, a long gray table that seemed to serve little purpose except to keep things Eagle didn't want to lose track of, a couple of huge fern plants alongside a couple of corners of the room, and a large bed with gray sheets with the metal headboard aligned parallel to the wall. Outside the door to his room was a domed hallway with a narrow walkway and a huge opening for various hovercrafts to speed through to get from point A to point B. The door itself was humungous and Eagle wondered about the necessity of the hangar like entranceway into a mere bedroom for a family member of the president.

Even so, the Grand Mansion did not impress Eagle, and he never liked to spend too much time in the awfully large home for too long. He spent most of his time napping or finding his way to the battle domes of the Academy, where he learned quickly that it was nearly impossible to get into a mecha without clearance, so all he could do was watch. Many times he tried to look for that one boy he battled a few months ago, but to no avail, and Eagle skipped out of school one day to see what time of day that boy would be present in the battle domes. However, there were too many cadets flooding in and out every minute, and an officer finally came by and escorted Eagle out, recognizing him as only a citizen and not a cadet.

One day, a month after his father took the oath and assumed the role of president and Eagle had seen no sign of either of his parents in over a week, Eagle wandered the Grand Mansion halls one day after school and stumbled across a small platform on the top of the dome, and the sight astounded him, and he took back anything negative he ever said or thought about the Mansion.

There was a small parting of black clouds, and what Eagle saw, was a brilliant blue. It was a much deeper blue than the energy orbs on the headbands and power supply centers of the larger vehicle, and Eagle knew not how to describe it, except that he could only stare at it with a smile, and he sat and stared until the blue sky turned red then indigo and then black.

Once Eagle shook himself out of his reverie, for the first time in ages he felt at peace, and the upper observation deck of the Grand Mansion turned into Eagle's secret, and he would only disclose the location of it to two people in his entire life.

Two months later, Eagle received a rare message from his father inviting him into the main office, and he quickly dressed into his comfortable black turtleneck and pants and made his way to his father's office. There, he was met with the retreating green back and graying hair of the general, and his father, his brown eyes weary with little sleep, looked up from his desk and waved his hand, inviting Eagle to seat in the dark green chair in front of him. Eagle complied stiffly, and his father smiled wearily.

"There's no need to be so formal, Eagle," he said. "I know I've been busy lately, and I may be the president now, but above all I'm your father. I always will be." Eagle did not change his posture; his father sighed. "I can't promise you when everything will be back to the way it used to be—"

Eagle shook his head. "I don't think it ever will be."

"Maybe you're right. You have a bad habit of that." Eagle chuckled, and his father sighed with relief. "There. Now, I have to ask you something. The end of your last year in the regular schools is nearly here. Your mother and I are concerned… but do you have any plans for afterwards? Were you looking at any particular academy?"

Eagle shook his head though a lie. His father seemed to relax a little, but his eyes spelled worriedly a hesitant suggestion. "Dad, is there anywhere you _want_ me to go? I'll go."

His father shook his head. "I only want you to go where you want to go."

"But—"

"I'm not going to try to win you over to a suggestion, and I'm going to tell you the truth," said his father firmly, looking straight into Eagle's eyes. "The Cabinet—no, more like the general, everyone else just agrees with him… anyway. They think that the military academy would be the perfect fit for you."

"Oh," said Eagle with a frown. "Is that it?"

His father stared at him, and then burst out laughing. "It's just like you to make a comment like that. If I sent you there—with your scores, you're more than eligible—you wouldn't have any complaints at all?"

Eagle shook his head. "I don't see why I should. Is there any reason why they want to put me through the Academy?"

Though there were many academies in Autozam for various professions, the military academy was always called _the_ Academy because of the prestige that accompanied it, so Eagle already had an idea why it would be a wonderful move to put the president's son through the rigorous program the Academy had to offer; after all, there was a very slim chance that Eagle would perform poorly there.

"Good image," said his father with a wave of his hand. Of course. "I don't care about that, but ever since they mentioned it, your mother and I got to thinking, and I was just wondering if you even wanted to go to the Academy. You never talk much to begin with, and now that we're seeing less and less of you, well, we were getting concerned, that's all."

"Sure, I'll go. I'll be happy to go," said Eagle with a smile. His father glared at him.

"I hope you're not just saying that just because you think it'll make me happy."

"I'm not, Dad, I promise you. So long as I get into the fighter course, I think I'll enjoy the Academy," said Eagle.

His father laughed. "Well, yeah, I guess you are an ace at the mecha, aren't you? Sure thing. I'll let the Cabinet know next week, so think about it for a little bit."

"I don't need to." Eagle kept smiling brighter and brighter. The prospect of going to the military academy seemed better and better by the second. "I have my heart set on this decision. I want to go to the Academy. Let them know right now, or else I'll tell them myself."

For the first time in a long time, Chrysler Vision seemed satisfied. "Excellent," he said as he pushed the red call button to summon the members of his Cabinet.

* * *

Though the Cabinet had been thrilled at the news, somewhere between the announcement and Eagle's first day a mix-up had occurred and Eagle would enter the military academy under the leadership course with an interest in combat. After he spoke with the headmaster of the school, who was a muscular grayish brown man, he decided that he was content, since he could still spend a good deal of his time at the battle domes. So, Eagle Vision went to the military academy, feeling as though the only thing he left behind was the magical blue sky at the top of the Grand Mansion dome. 

After the immediate morning review where the headmaster barked at the freshmen to yield them into submission, each of the cadets were given a rectangular green key with a number at the top, signaling their dorm room. Eagle did not hurry but did not waste any time to get up to his dorm room, because he had only half an hour before his first class started. When he slid the key into a narrow slot beside the room, the doors parted from the center and slid open, and he stepped inside with his bulky bag draped over his shoulder.

He had beaten his roommate there, for it was completely empty save for two silver desks taken up nearly completely by a computer, with a shelf space only for slates of text. Those were on the opposite side of the room, towards the windows that faced the black clouds of Autozam. No wonder the Academy was never seen as quite the happy place, Eagle thought bitterly. Besides both of the desks there were long, narrow beds with white sheets lined up against the wall, and on the other side of the beds, also against the wall, were huge, metal closets already equipped with a formal uniform and several pairs of "casual" uniforms. Compared to his room back at the Grand Mansion, this room was drearier, smaller, and somehow more comfortable.

Eagle knew he couldn't stay long, though, because he needed to find his class, and that was in the opposite building from the battle domes, so he set his bag on the bed and left, making sure he had his key in his pocket and started his first day at another new school.

It was only slightly different than the Lexcen school. In classes, he felt all eyes from the professor to the boy in the back corner of the room on him, scrutinizing, waiting for Eagle either to screw up or to show absolute brilliance. Eagle did neither and instead listened; falling asleep here as opposed to falling asleep back in Lexcen, he knew, would suffer many consequences, so as much review as everything seemed to be, he forced himself to stay awake and alert.

Lunch was a peculiar event. He sat at a table, and for a while some people sat as far away from that table as they could, or sat near the table but not at the table, and eventually, and Eagle decided that it was because there were no more seats elsewhere, others sat at his table. Instead of blatantly ignoring Eagle, however, the other cadets at the table tried their best to include Eagle into their conversation, asking about his interests, and pretending that they shared the same interests when time and time again they would bird walk into an entirely different conversation. Eagle only smiled politely and spoke politely and decided that he should take to napping during lunchtime again.

After classes were over and the same boys and girls who talked to Eagle during lunch tried to get him involved in the conversation again, to which Eagle politely apologized and said that he would like to get some homework done. They laughed, but let Eagle go about his own ways, and he knew that they would have nothing nice to say about him once they were out of earshot. It was a good thing he did not expect the military academy to be any different than Lexcen.

He went back to his dorm room, and after he opened the door and slid inside, he saw the bottom half of a smaller human crouched by his desk and swaying back and forth, and he heard a mumbled voice from within his desk. Surrounding the desk were various shapes and sizes of interesting looking tools.

Eagle frowned. "What are you doing?"

The boy yelped and threw himself from beneath the desk and he rolled to a sitting position with his legs outstretched and his body being held up only by his small arms. His normal hair was a normal brown, and he was really small, and Eagle wondered if his growth spurt was just taking a very slow start. His normal brown eyes, however, was not normal, and instead a certain spark grew there, an eye for details, an eye for life, an eye for a future. Eagle knew immediately that this was no normal boy.

"Oh, hi!" said the boy with a bright smile as he pulled his legs in and crossed them. "I didn't expect you to come so soon after classes."

"Likewise," said Eagle. "May I ask what you're doing?"

The boy looked at the desk and smirked playfully. "Oh, well, before I went to class I decided to see what was going on with these computers, I kept hearing that they were state of the art, and well, yeah, they are, but they were awfully slow. So! During lunch, I got my computer up to a speed I'm used to working with, and I decided, well, why not work on my roommate's? So that's what I'm doing now." Then he bowed his head sheepishly. "Um, I'm sorry if you didn't _want_ me to…"

Eagle smiled. "No, no, it's fine." Besides, if the computer broke he could always find a way to get another one. He was good at that. "Is your computer really faster?"

The boy nodded with a big grin. "Yup! Look, come see, come see!"

He scrambled to his feet and rolled in the chair to his computer desk and switched on his computer. Eagle came behind the boy to see, and indeed, the computer loaded much faster than even the computers back at the Grand Mansion. The boy played around with opening some programs here and there, and then he spun around to look at Eagle, grinning.

"Don't worry, I made sure to test with my computer first to make sure it would even work," he said. "And I'm not doing any other changes to your computer, and I was hoping to finish before you got back."

Eagle laughed. "Just in case it didn't work, and I couldn't blame you?"

"No!" said the boy indignantly. He hesitated, and then sighed. "Okay, fine, that was part of the reason. Even geniuses like me make mistakes sometimes too. But mostly because, I don't know." He shrugged. "I guess a part of me didn't want you to know…"

"Know that you did that? Why?"

"Have you _met_ some of the brutes here?" asked the boy with wide eyes. "I'm glad you're not one of them, well, looks considered, but some people here are just plain _bullies_, and some are snot-nosed rich brats. I'm not saying _all_ rich kids are snot-nosed though. I don't think I am."

Eagle laughed and took a seat on his bed. "Well, why don't you finish up? I have homework I'd like to get done before I go to bed."

"Man, they piled you with homework on the first day? I have enough to keep me busy until dinnertime, and then I'm done," said the boy. "You really have enough to keep you busy the rest of the night? I heard that doesn't happen until next week."

"No, I don't have a whole lot, I'm just really tired and would like to sleep," said Eagle. The boy frowned.

"Sleep? Well, I can understand that the first day at the Academy would be harsh, but I hope you're tired only because it's the first day. If you think this is too tiring I'd hate to see how you hold up the rest of the term."

"No, I just like to sleep," said Eagle. The boy sighed, exasperated.

"Man, that's boring. Okay, okay, I'll finish this up, even though it might take me until dinnertime, so you might be going to bed at the same time as the rest of us."

Eagle chuckled, and the boy crawled back underneath the desk. Eagle leaned against the wall and decided that until the boy was done he could take a little nap, but as soon as he shut his eyes the boy started talking again.

"So, are you from Integra?" asked the boy, his voice muffled against the walls of the desk.

Eagle did not open his eyes. "For now."

"'For now?'" the boy sounded puzzled. "You mean like for the time you're at the Academy?"

"No, my family lives here, for now."

"Oh, so you move a lot?"

"If what you mean by a lot is a total of twice, then yes."

The boy chuckled. "Twice in the fourteen years of your life is a lot," said the boy. "Unless, well, _are_ you fourteen?"

"More fourteen than you, I'm sure," said Eagle with a small chuckle. "You definitely don't look old enough to be in the Academy."

"Well, really, I'm not," said the boy as a metal clang rang through the dorm, followed by the boy muttering, "Ow." Then he continued. "I just skipped too many levels to count. I'm only ten, you see."

Eagle's eyes flew open and leaned over to look at the boy. "_Ten_?"

The boy laughed. "Like I said, I'm a genius. I could probably skip another level if I wanted to, but the Academy was already worried letting me in now as a freshman, they wanted me to wait another year, but I guess with my stepmother being the person she is now they _had_ to let me in." He pulled out of the desk and grinned at Eagle. "I normally don't like it when people use their rich and famous parents as an excuse to get what they want, but in this case, I'm kind of glad. I'm still bored in my classes, but I don't know how my attendance would have been if I stayed at Sonata."

Eagle smiled gently. "Everything seems like review?"

"Worse than review," said the boy. "But I can deal with it. Oh!" His eyes brightened, and then he scratched the back of his head with a nervous laugh. "I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Zazu. What's yours?"

"Eagle," he said, and the two shook hands both with the same hopeful smiles.

* * *

Sure enough, Zazu finished "fixing" the computer before dinnertime, and after unsuccessfully begging Eagle to go down with him to the cafeteria he left, and Eagle went to his computer and immediately was awed by the speed of the machine, which already seemed faster than Zazu's computer. Zazu was more brilliant than he gave himself credit for; the mechanic course was perfect for the young boy. Within record time Eagle completed his homework, and before he climbed into his bed again he left a note for his young roommate: 

_Thanks for the upgrades. I finished my homework faster than I thought I would have. Good night, and we'll talk again tomorrow._

He left the note on Zazu's computer, turned off his computer, rolled into bed, and much to his surprise, did not dream of the blue skies back at the Grand Mansion.

* * *

Two small arms shook Eagle awake, and he groggily opened his eyes to see a wide-eyed, frantic Zazu urging him to get out of bed. 

"We're running late!" he yelped, pointing wildly at the clock on his computer.

Eagle groaned and sat up, not even looking in the direction of his roommate's computer. "What time is it?"

"Five minutes until morning review! Come _on_, Eagle, we have to _go_!"

Eagle grinned. "When did you wake up? Just now?"

"Five minutes ago. I don't want to be yelled at my second day, so hurry up, hurry up!" Zazu pulled needlessly at Eagle's arm, and Eagle laughed as he climbed out of bed and opened his closet.

"You could just leave now," he said, as he dressed into his olive green uniform. "No need for you to get in trouble on the account of me."

"But—" Zazu protested.

"It's fine," said Eagle as he pulled on his boots. "Really."

"Well, you're ready now, aren't you?" said Zazu. "So we can still go together. Come on, come on!"

Eagle continued to laugh as the two ran out of the dorm room, Zazu yelling at himself under his breath. By some miracle the two barely made it to the straight rows of columns of their fellow cadets before it was time, and Eagle went towards the leadership block and Zazu headed for the mechanic's block. As the two parted ways, Eagle looked at Zazu and said:

"Thank you for waking me up."

Zazu grinned and threw Eagle a thumbs-up before jogging off to his block just as the headmaster began yelling and screaming nonsense that Eagle immediately tuned out, and reflected on blue skies and white streams of light. Then the cadets were ordered to head straight for the first class and consequently dismissed, and the two passed each other on the way, and smiled.

Like the day before, many eyes hesitantly glanced at Eagle, and two of the girls Eagle sat with earlier, during each break, would giggle insanely and would not approach him. He cared little and only focused more on reading ahead in the texts rather than listen in on what those girls may have to say about him. Of course they talked about him behind his back. Eagle was used to being known as "the weird kid," and he knew he would probably suffer the same fate here at the Academy.

The teachers scrutinized Eagle less and focused more on the real troublemakers in the Academy, sentencing a doodle to an afternoon's detention and a whisper to a week's detention. Nobody could or wanted to fathom what detention meant at the Academy, so quickly the other cadets quieted into submission.

The homework load built, and finally it was lunchtime. Eagle took his time to the lunch line, and after he received his tray of slops of who-knows-what, he glanced around the cafeteria. Most tables were taken, but the cadets he sat with the day before waved him over to their table in the direct center of the cafeteria. Why not, Eagle thought and he made his way there. More pretending, and more conceited laughter that the boys and girls tried to hide behind their stares away from Eagle. Eagle, in turn, pretended not to notice, or care.

_Be like other children, sweetheart!_ Those were his mother's words before he left for his first day at the school at Lexcen. Eagle looked around the table he sat, at the other cadets, and their pushing and shoving and pointing and insulting and laughing and pouting and talking and pretending. Eagle knew how out of place he was, and wondered how much longer he could go on like this. If it weren't for his lack of breakfast, he would have just gone right up to his dorm room and napped. Assuming Zazu was there, he was certain the boy would wake him up in time for class. Tomorrow, Eagle decided, as he abruptly stood from the table and headed for class, leaving behind more gossip about the son of the president as a souvenir.

Once the afternoon classes were completed and Eagle went back to his dorm with one more text of homework under his arm, Zazu had not yet returned, so Eagle sat in front of his computer and hooked the cables of his headband into the main console and started his homework.

When he was done with the mecha controls unit—for at least the first couple of weeks the freshmen could not go near the battle domes so that they wouldn't kill themselves trying to move an arm—the door slid open, and Zazu waltzed in backwards.

"See you tomorrow!" he said towards the open door.

An uncertain tenor voice replied, "Uh, yeah, and thanks for the help, Torque."

The doors closed, and Zazu sighed and threw his texts onto his bed. He muttered under his breath, "Help, yeah right. Do your own work." He noticed Eagle then, and smiled brightly. "Hi, Eagle!"

Eagle decided that it would probably be best if he did not mention Zazu's exasperation, and smiled back. He saved his work and turned off the computer and slipped off his headband. "Thanks again for waking me up this morning. I'm sorry that I almost made you late."

Zazu laughed and waved his hand. "Oh, no, it was nothing. Hey, I couldn't find you at lunch today. Were you sleeping?" His grin grew mischievous.

"Not today, maybe tomorrow," said Eagle. "I'm sick of the people I sit with."

"Already? Man, it's only the second day! I hope _I'm_ not bothering you that much."

"No, not at all," said Eagle, and was shocked by the honesty of his own words. "Not… at all."

Zazu sighed with relief. "Well, that's good. Hey, is the computer still working? No problems?"

Eagle nodded. "Yes. I think you made my computer better than yours, though. Are you sure that the Academy won't move you up a level?"

"I'm pretty sure. But I don't think I want to anymore."

Eagle frowned. "Why not?"

"Because I would have to change roommates."

The two laughed together, and Zazu made his way in front of his computer and took a headband from his belt and slipped it onto his forehead. As he connected the cables into his main console, Eagle swiveled back to his blank computer screen, bit his lip, and turned back around to face the young boy.

"Zazu?"

"Yeah?"

"Your last name is Torque?"

Zazu stiffened and sheepishly looked over his shoulder. "Yeah. Why?"

Eagle shrugged. "I think it's the same last name as my father's friend, Maverick. Are you related to him?"

Zazu chuckled. "Yeah, he's my dad."

Eagle let this information sink in, and slowly said, "So, your stepmother is Kia Avant?"

Zazu stiffened again and a look of utter fright climbed onto his face. "Yeah… but it's nothing special, really. I mean, yeah, she's the vice president, but she's only my step mom, and…"

Eagle grinned. "Don't worry about it, Zazu. Your stepmother and my father were co-workers in the Senate. I know what it's like."

"It's a bit different when she's the Vice President of Autozam," Zazu replied flatly.

"I can relate, though. My father is Chrysler Vision."

Zazu blinked once, then twice, and fell out of his chair howling, surprisingly not ripping out the cords during his tumble. "Who would have thought!" he said. "I'm so sorry, Eagle, I shouldn't have assumed… oh, man!" He climbed back onto his chair and stared at Eagle with an apologetic smile. "Yeah, I guess you would know what it's like. It's too late to do anything about it though. We like each other now, and there's no going back."

"Yes," Eagle said, once again shocked by the truth looming behind his agreement.

Zazu turned back to his homework, and Eagle did likewise, and at random intervals Zazu would throw back conversations of nothing, and Eagle would always reply. Finally, an hour later, Zazu glanced at the clock and once again begged Eagle unsuccessfully to go with him to the cafeteria for dinner. He only left after he made Eagle promise not to fall asleep before he got back, and to make sure of it, he was going to leave his key in the room, so that Eagle should stay awake so he could let Zazu in. In turn, Eagle told Zazu to get back as soon as possible, before two hours later, and Zazu agreed.

"It's fun talking to you," said Zazu. "I'm looking forward to it! That's why you can't go to sleep before I get back."

"Zazu, we have the rest of the year to talk," Eagle reminded him.

"Yeah, but we can double that time if you just stayed awake. So I'll be back as soon as I'm done eating, and don't you dare go to sleep!"

"Okay, okay," said Eagle, and Zazu, satisfied, left the dorm room.

As Eagle finished the last of his homework assignment for one of his basics classes, he smiled, and as soon as he wrapped up the last of it, he unplugged the cords from the computer. He took the green key next to his computer and left the dorm room. At the end of the hallway, there was a thin gray communications box, and Eagle plugged in his cords there.

After a momentary pause, the face of his mother appeared on the screen, her long blonde hair in a rare loose ponytail slung over her shoulder, and her golden eyes shimmered with her smile.

"Eagle, honey, hi!" she said. "How is the Academy?"

"It's fine, Mom, it really is," he replied. He paused for a moment, and then returned the smile with one of his own. "Mom, I made a friend yesterday." And he proceeded to tell her everything he knew about Zazu Torque.


	5. Chapter Four: The Academy's Best

**Crash and Burn**

_Chapter Four: The Academy's Best_

**Bearit's Notes**: Okay, here's an explanation why this chapter took a little longer to get out than the other ones: I was working on, and finished, the interlude that was supposed to go in between this chapter and the last one, but then I decided, I wanted this story to flow a little better, and having these interludes inserted every third chapter would just be too jarring. So, with the power invested in me by Eagle Muse, I decided not to post the interlude and just to work on the fourth chapter instead. I think it's better this way.

Anyway, here's a chapter you've been waiting for, complete with a teacher that is reminiscent of my crazy sophomore year history teacher, and please, as always, review! Thanks, and enjoy!

* * *

"You know," said Zazu one day as he waited for Eagle at the door of their dorm room, "it would be so much easier to wake you up if you napped in the library." 

Eagle laughed as he grabbed some texts from his desk and followed Zazu out the door. "I like my privacy," he replied as the door slid shut behind them and the two walked towards the elevator.

"Yeah, but it would save so much more time for both of us if you napped in the library. That way, I can spend more time enjoying my lunch, and you can spend more time sleeping. And then class is just _right there_. See how it works out for both of us?"

They reached the gray doors of the elevator as soon as they swung open, and of course, nobody stood inside; everyone by this time was either heading to class or scarfing down the last of their midday meal at the risk of afternoon detention for sitting in their seats two seconds too late. Even then, that was pretty generous by now, a month after the first day of classes.

After almost being late to morning review the second day of classes, Zazu made it a point to return to the room almost immediately after eating dinner so while he completed his homework he could talk to Eagle. Because of this, he was able to go to bed at a decent hour and wake up in enough time to usher Eagle out of bed and to make sure his friend was dressed and on time for breakfast and morning review.

Sometimes Zazu would sneak back portable foods from the cafeteria during the lunch and dinner hours; he was convinced that Eagle never ate aside from the morning meals, though Eagle always found sneaky ways to snack in between classes and recently, during his mecha training class, though he knew today that was going to be brought to a pleasing close.

At the bottom level of the elevator, after handing Eagle a piece of brown cake ("I know you like sweet stuff, so here's a rare treat courtesy of the Academy chefs"), the two separated with a smile, a short wave, and a "see you later" towards their respective buildings.

Finally, Eagle's instructor felt the cadets mature enough to hop into the virtual reality machines and today was the first class meeting in the battle domes. Eagle finished the last of the rather stale cake and wandered down the stairs to the basement level, where he found his classmates waiting anxiously in front of the huge double doors of the training room, each glancing over their notes as if the instructor was going to give them a pop quiz on the controls of the mecha. Eagle couldn't help but to force back a giggle; hadn't they taken enough of those quizzes in the classroom that they should feel confident by now? Then again, Eagle figured, most of them spent their off times in the cafeteria or out on the town of Integra enjoying life. No matter.

He didn't feel like waiting outside for all eternity for the teacher, who would find a way to get them all into trouble. So, Eagle walked up to the blue doors, took out his green key card (which he recently discovered worked for all facilities on the Academy campus), and slid it through the narrow slot on the pad adjacent to the doors. His classmates gasped.

"What are you _doing_?" one of the girls exclaimed.

Eagle threw a smile over his shoulder. "Just seeing if it works here like it does at the library."

One boy glared at him and folded his arms across his chest. "Of course it doesn't, are you stupid or someth—"

The doors slowly creaked open.

"—ing?"

Eagle continued to grin at his classmates, who all had their jaws crashing through the floor, and chuckled. "See? It never hurts to try."

"C-can we go in?" asked a girl tentatively.

"I don't know, maybe only the sons of presidents get access," some boy murmured under his breath. Unfortunately, this boy was right next to Eagle, and when he looked at him, the boy cringed behind another boy cadet. "I didn't say nothing," he said a little louder, just enough for Eagle to hear.

"Of course you didn't," said Eagle kindly. To everyone else, he shrugged and waved a friendly departing hand. "Well, I'm going to go in now. The instructor might be waiting."

And so he turned on his heel and walked inside the dimly lit, huge room, with only the center illuminated with the two fighter mecha latched onto the far walls of the center. Eagle grinned; he remembered. The NSU and the TVR. Eagle briefly wondered if he would finally be able to meet that one boy again, the tanned one, who he battled those few months ago, but shook the idea out of his head. Of course not. That boy was a year older. In the Academy, people rarely spoke with people from outside their grade level.

Still, Eagle could not help but to hold onto that hope. Something about that boy struck him as something memorable…

"Ah, there you children are!" said the instructor, a smooth-headed bald man with a black mustache pasted under his nose, with open arms of exasperation. He stood by the center controls of the circle of virtual simulators that lined the perimeter of the center ring, with a twisted frown with twisted eyes. "I was getting worried that you lost your way! Now, hurry along, get into one of this consoles, but don't you hook in any cables until I tell you to do so, or you will pay the penalty and believe you me you _don't_ want to know what that is."

Each of the cadets meandered towards one of the virtual reality simulators; already they were used to this instructor's condescending posture and speech, but he was also known for handing out the worst of punishments so all obeyed and did not touch a single button on the console in front of them.

Once all were seated, the instructor took a glance around and nodded. "Good. Now you may plug in. Is everyone confident enough that they won't electrocute themselves trying to get this done?"

No one said anything but Eagle caught the rolling eyes of his the boy sitting next to him. "No," the boy muttered, "we've only been doing this since we were old enough to walk."

The instructor turned and glared at the boy. "What was that, Protege?"

"Nothing, sir," he replied promptly.

"Good. I'll see you for afternoon and evening detention today. I need someone to clean these machines after everyone else put their grubby hands on them."

The boy sighed and plugged in the cords from his headband into the ports of the simulation computer. Eagle offered an unwanted apologetic smile that the boy ignored and took the cords of his headband and stuck them into the holes at the edge of the console. The screen switched onto a bright blue screen that scanned all of Eagle's data for a moment, and then beeped, asking if he wanted to attempt a simulated battle.

"Alrighty, then," said the instructor with his hands clasped behind his back. "You may begin a simulation. I expect _none_ of you to win with _anything_ intact. A hand if you're lucky, maybe. Enjoy your first death, children."

So Eagle nodded, and the computer accepted his mental communication, and on the screen another mecha fizzled into sight. Yellow words declaring the start of the battle begun, and Eagle could have laughed at the lack of speed the other mecha had. With a swift move, Eagle's simulated mecha swung an arm and sent the other mecha flying.

_COMPUTER DOWN_, the screen said.

Eagle looked up from his console, found his instructor, and raised a hand. "Um, sir?"

The instructor turned, his twisted eyebrows illuminating his twisted smirk. "What's this, the class brainiac already lost? I expected more from you, Vision."

Eagle dropped his hand and pointed his eyes towards his console. "Actually…"

The instructor frowned and approached Eagle's console. "Actually what?" As soon as he came behind Eagle the instructor sputtered, "Y-you… you _won_? That quickly? For your _first time_?" Eagle grinned, and the instructor shook his head. "I need to see this to believe it. Restart. And—" Eagle glanced over his shoulder to see the instructor rubbing his chin with his forefinger. "—let's make the level harder."

The instructor stiffly moved past five consoles the center controls. He typed in a few keys, and then hurried to Eagle's back again. "Alright, let's see how you handle this."

Again, the mecha on the screen fizzled in an upright position, and before Eagle could blink, the mecha flew at him, and Eagle quickly dodged and moved to get the opposing mecha in his view again. This time, the mecha outstretched an arm, and the hand transformed into a cannon-like limb and began firing at Eagle's virtual mecha. Eagle made sure that the mecha ducked, and by doing so, he was out of the line of fire, and Eagle flew towards the other mecha with a strange saber made of light from his extended arm. He smiled, and pointed the tip of the saber to the head of the computer's mecha. Upon penetration, the computer beeped again.

_COMPUTER DOWN_

"Impressive," said the instructor slowly. "Very, very impressive." He sniffed a mimic of a snort. "I think you might have broken Metro's record."

At that, the immediately surrounding students swiveled their heads towards Eagle and started incessantly whispering.

"Metro, sir?" Eagle asked. Apparently, this was a name familiar to everyone else in his class. He could not recall that name ever showing up in his texts, so he had to be a living legend of the nearer past that no one would have written about so soon.

"Only the best in the sophomore level, Vision," said the instructor firmly. "He could probably beat a few of the upperclassmen with his skills. And I almost wonder…" He shook his head. "Never mind. You may proceed." And the instructor turned on his heel curtly and headed for the center controls once more, his hands clasped behind his back.

As the many pairs of eyes unglued themselves from Eagle and back to their own respective simulations, Eagle's small smile ignited a flame of pride, and he continued to duel against many mecha, each at differing levels in no particular order, possibly because the instructor kept testing Eagle and his battle tactic skills.

As soon as the class was over and many of the students pulled their friends to the side and hopelessly discreetly glanced at Eagle and murmured what had to be more rumors, the instructor waved Eagle over to the center console. Eagle made his way over without apparent enthusiasm; however, inside, he knew that this could only mean very good things.

When the last cadet left the basement room of the doors, a few older cadets were already pouring inside and looking at blue computer screens affixed to the dark walls of the room. Some cheered, others complained. The instructor cleared his throat, and Eagle turned his full attention to him.

"I was talking to the headmaster just now," he said, "and I had him monitor a few of your simulations. He and I are in agreement, and tomorrow you will not be meeting here directly after lunch."

Eagle frowned. "Sir…?"

"Vision, tomorrow, at this time, you will be going to the basics class you usually go to after this class. After that class, you will be here, with the sophomores. Is that understood?"

Eagle took this in for a moment and smiled. "Is this a permanent schedule change?"

"Yes, Vision, yes, it is. I knew it was no coincidence you aced every quiz and exam without even blinking an eye."

"Thank you, sir."

The instructor nodded and waved away Eagle. "Go to your basics class. That's the last time you will be in there with those bunch of children. You better enjoy it—or suffer one last time, however you choose to see it."

Eagle laughed all the way out of the battle domes and into his basics class, where the teacher kept yelling at his classmates to stop staring at the president's son; he was _not_ going to give them the answers to the homework.

* * *

The schedule swap did not happen as smoothly as Eagle thought it would have happened, and it took the entire time after classes and half of dinnertime in the headmaster's office before everything cleared. Such a silly process for a simple schedule swap, Eagle thought, and he knew that he would hear a pout from Zazu as soon as he walked back into the dorm room. Sure enough, as soon as the doors to the room parted open, he saw Zazu at his computer with a worried frown that quickly turned displeased as soon as he noticed Eagle. 

"Did you really get detention?" asked Zazu. "I mean, it's such a relief if that's all that happened, but you? Detention?"

Eagle chuckled and shook his head as he set his texts to the floor and sat on his bed. "No, I was just getting transferred."

"_Transferred_?" Zazu yelped as he hopped out of the computer and onto Eagle's bed, the impact enough to have Eagle come an inch off the mattress in the process. "You're _leaving_? You can't leave me! I don't want another roommate! What's so bad about the Academy anyway? You're not going to get a better challenge anywhere else!"

Eagle smiled. "How about in the second year mecha combat class?"

Zazu froze in mid-rant.

"Oh," he said quietly, almost sheepishly. "They're letting you skip a level?" He crossed his arms and frowned. "But that still means—"

"No, Zazu, I'm only getting moved up for just that class. Don't worry about it. I'll be in your basics class after lunch and in the sophomore mecha class after that. And—" He winked. "I'll still be your roommate. I just spent all of my time at the headmaster's to get that cleared up, that's all. Sorry to have made you worried," said Eagle, still smiling. Zazu sighed a breath of relief, which made Eagle beam a little bit brighter. "You thought I was in detention?"

Zazu scratched behind his ear. "Well, uh, no, not really, I thought something worse happened, like, I don't know, just… something bad. At dinner, well, my stepbrother just kind of guessed that maybe you were just in detention or something." Zazu laughed. "I didn't believe him, of course, until you came back not hurt or anything, but… yeah."

Eagle laughed. "Thanks, Zazu."

"Hey, congrats on getting moved up!" said Zazu as he headed back for his computer. "Man, that's so lucky! We're still working on stupid repairing cleaning gadgets and cooking utensils. Come on, now, this is a _military_ academy!" He put his hands to his face. "'Oh, no, we're under attack! Break out the vacuum cleaners!'" He threw his hands down. "Come _on_."

"It's just getting the basic idea of mechanics down for everyone else who isn't a genius," said Eagle. "Just be patient."

"Yeah, well, even when—if—we do get onto mechas within the next month, I don't think my brilliance will get me moved up. I'm still 'too young,' remember?"

Eagle shrugged and moved towards his computer. "You never know."

"Yeah, yeah."

There was a brief moment of silence as Zazu furiously typed and Eagle hooked into the computer; then, Eagle remembered what his instructor had talked about earlier, what the headmaster commented on—it was a name, a name everyone seemed to know but him…

"Hey, Zazu?"

"Yeah?" said Zazu almost disinterested.

"Who is Metro?"

"Metro?" He sounded a little baffled. "Where'd you hear that name?"

Eagle smiled. Well, at least he wasn't the only one out of the loop. "In my class today. They kept saying that I beat this guy's record, this Metro guy, and all of my classmates knew him and I was just wondering—"

"Only Metro I know is Geo. He's a sophomore, friends with my stepbrother, also in the mecha combating but has more of a concentration in it than you do, and he—wait." Zazu chair squeaked as he swiveled around, and Eagle complemented the action. "You beat _Geo's_ record?"

Zazu put his hands to his belly and just about near cackled. Needless to say, Eagle was quite puzzled. "Oh, so you do know him?"

"Yeah, he's only the best mecha fighter in the school. Well, second only to you, I guess. But still! That's pretty amazing! I'm surprised they didn't move you up _two_ levels."

"Well, they _did_ keep saying how he could probably beat some upperclassmen," Eagle offered hesitantly. Zazu kept laughing maniacally.

"Well, yeah, he was offered to skip a whole level," said Zazu. "Since he's not doing mecha combat as a side thing, he could have been a junior right now. But then he didn't because, well." Zazu completely stopped his laughing and his talking as he thought long and hard. "Well, he didn't, because…" He silenced himself again. "Because he was… oh, fine, I don't know why he didn't. Maybe because he just didn't feel like it? Kids from the Lynx are like that."

Eagle widened his eyes and gaped at his friend. "He's from the Lynx? And he's that good?"

Zazu shrugged. "I think it's more of a '_Because_ he's from the Lynx he's that good' more than a 'He's from the Lynx _and_ he's that good.' From what I heard from Meson—my stepbrother, you know, you really _should_ meet him sometime—things are a bit rough there."

"That's what I've heard from my father, too, but—"

"So, you see? It makes sense!"

Eagle frowned; he disagreed, but there was no use arguing with Zazu over this. Maybe Zazu's stepbrother had actually been to the ghettos of Autozam, and that's how he met this Metro guy, and that's why Zazu might have a better idea than Eagle did from just having heard about it from his father, who probably never made his way down there, either. Still, from the stories he heard from the Lynx, only recently did the technological advances from the rest of Autozam made their permanent move into the slums, and so Eagle doubted there were any virtual reality simulators there yet.

Of course, Eagle had to remind himself, without having ever been in a virtual simulator, or any simulator for that matter, and having only read texts about mecha combat, he was able to beat that one boy in the training domes that one day he visited the Academy with his father. Maybe Metro was like that.

"I guess so," said Eagle. "Thanks for telling me all that. I was just wondering, that's all."

Zazu smirked. "Hey, best not to start your first day in a new class blind, right? Don't worry about it though. Geo's a cool guy. You'll like him. I promise."

Eagle smiled. "I'll remember that." And he did.

* * *

The next day after lunch, the normal routine began with Zazu waking up Eagle for class, and ended when the two did not separate at the bottom floor of the Academy's dormitories. Together they walked into class, and though they could not sit anywhere near each other, at least Eagle finally understood the breadth of Zazu's boredom. Eagle thought _he_ was having a hard time staying awake in his classes, but Zazu kept nodding himself awake every five minutes, struggling to listen to the teacher's lecture. What was particularly odd was that the teacher kept rambling over Zazu even when he noticed that his eyes were closed, but when someone else in the class started wandering their eyes around the classroom, the teacher would immediately give him a week of evening detention. 

Eagle was most amused by watching his friend throughout the class period. Amazingly, no one seemed to care that Eagle was in their class now; nobody paid any attention to the two as they walked into the room. Eagle wished it were like that for all of his classes, and he knew the mecha combat class today would be the worst it's been his entire life.

After the teacher dismissed them and the students filed out of the classroom, all engaged in their own conversations and their eyes only on their friends, Eagle and Zazu waved to each other as they parted ways, Zazu offering a quick "Good luck" as he followed his classmates to their next class. And so, Eagle walked alone to the battle domes, and when he reached the bottom of the stairs, the doors to the basement training room doors were already spread wide open and many older kids casually entered.

Eagle followed, trying to blend in as best as he could with the others, but for most people the growth spurt took a happy rate and most were at least three inches or so taller than him. Still, he had been here before, so there was no excuse to act timid or naive or green, which worked well into his advantage until he noticed many study the blue screens embedded into the wall.

"Hey, what's this name?" asked one boy, stern, pale, and a bit of a heavyweight. Others crowded around him and Eagle quickly glanced around for a good place to make himself inconspicuous.

"Vision?"

"What? The president has experience with this sort of stuff? Oh, oh, are we getting a demo?"

"_No_, idiot, the president's son, see? The first name? President's first name is _Chrysler_, dolt!"

"Hey, you think I care about this political shit?"

"He would be under 'guest' if he was going to give us a demo, anyway."

"I thought he was a freshman, though, the president's son…"

Yes, Eagle decided. Getting in the middle of the crowd would be the best way to go unnoticed. So he slowly slinked his way in the midst of the sophomores and decided to see what the blue screen thing was all about. Listed in the left hand column were the names of the students in the class, and in the right hand column were lists describing what each cadet were assigned to do during the session. Next to Eagle's name, he had to spend the first five minutes, like everyone else it seemed, on the virtual simulator, and then after that, unlike everyone else…

"Whoa, Metro! Get a load of this!"

"What?" a rough, amused voice piped up as a slightly taller figure than everyone else pushed through the crowd. Eagle turned to see who this boy was, this fighter who everyone knew as the best, and he gasped, and then, he almost fell over in a maniac guffaw as he put two and two together.

Of course. When he and his father ran away from the battle domes those months ago, his father even said that the boy he battled was "the strongest fighter in the freshman class of the Academy," a whole year older than Eagle. The boy that had always stuck in Eagle's mind, the boy he always looked for while he lived at the Grand Mansion, always spending his free time at the battle domes of the Academy, looking for him. What for, Eagle never knew, but here he was now, the spiky-haired, tanned, muscular boy with a criss-cross scar on his chin, and everything suddenly made sense.

That was Metro. He should have figured. Well, he didn't exactly have the prodigious brains of Zazu Torque to figure it all out before now, that was for sure.

"This new kid, this Vision kid, he's your first opponent today," said the boy who had called Metro over.

Metro grinned. "Yeah, the headmaster was talking to me about that this morning. He's apparently really good, beat my record."

Everyone in the crowd gaped at him. "No way!" one of them murmured.

Metro laughed just as the patronizing voice of the instructor rose over the crowd. "Oh, yes way," said the instructor, not at all amused with his arms loosely crossed at his belly. "This kid can blow all of you way out of the water. Only Metro here stands a chance."

"Well, then," said a boy, "why didn't he skip another level?"

"Because Metro turned down skipping a level, so the headmaster wouldn't let me do that to this one."

The boy frowned. "That doesn't make sense."

"Do you want to spend your free time with the freshmen, Forester?"

The boy immediately clammed. Many chuckled, a girl with short hair next to Eagle giggled, and Eagle let a corner of his mouth tug upwards. The tone of the sophomore level class certainly was different from the freshman level class; everybody could relax a little more here.

"Now, then, boys—"

"Ahem!" coughed the girl next to Eagle.

The instructor sighed. "And girl." She grinned almost mockingly. "Please, go warm-up, die for the millionth time, and if you're lucky you might be able to hop into one of the robots today."

As the crowd filed out towards the virtual simulators, Eagle glanced around, a little baffled that this girl was the only one in this class. In the freshman class, the ratio was fifty-fifty as far as male and female cadets went, so it struck Eagle as odd that this class was filled with nearly all boys. Before he could ponder this further, however, he locked eyes with the tanned boy, Metro, and something of understanding passed through the boy's hazel eyes, and he grinned a lopsided grin.

"So, you're the kid everyone keeps talking about," he said.

Eagle nodded. "That's what it seems."

The boy extended an arm. "I'm Geo, by the way. Geo Metro."

Eagle could not help but to return the friendly smile of the class ace and shook hands with the boy. "Eagle Vision."

"I think I've seen you around somewhere," said Geo almost carelessly, but there was a definite way in which he chose his words; he spoke deliberately, but also with haste, a paradox that Eagle would come to understand better later. Geo smirked. "Hey, I remember now—"

"Hey, you boys! Chop chop!" the instructor barked as he clapped his hands with the last two words.

Geo cringed. "Ow, man, I better get going. I've been doing a better job about not getting into trouble so far this year." He grinned at Eagle again. "I guess I'll be seeing you after the warm-up, eh?"

Eagle nodded, and the two went to the last two unoccupied virtual simulators. After the brief warm-up in which Eagle managed to get through seven battles, his computer beeped at him and all but ordered him to man the NSU. Funny twist, Eagle thought with a laugh as he headed for the training mecha, that he would have to battle the same robot he manned the last time he was in the mecha. And funny how his opponent was the same one as before, and vice versa!

Quickly Eagle hooked his cables into the consoles of the mecha, which was very similar to the other one across the way. His mecha triggered online only seconds after the other mecha, and the two began combat.

The battle lasted longer this time than the last, and the opposing mecha, the TVR, after a minute or two of scuffle, took out an arm with a gun attached and shot beams of light. There was a mimic of an impact, and the screen indicated Eagle's loss. Luckily, this was two out of three, and Eagle smiled as the battle restarted. More scuffling, then when Eagle decided to experiment and found a similar saber made of light from the virtual simulator from the other day, he attacked the TVR successfully to the mid torso. There was a tie now between the NSU and the TVR, and Eagle knew just as well as his opponent, Geo, that neither side would give in easily.

There was a definite deadlock as the two exchanged blows, dodged each other's weapon shots, and outsmarted the other. Eagle found himself smiling the entire battle—for the first time in a long time, Eagle was thoroughly enjoying himself, and what an incredible feeling it was. And yet, he concentrated. He concentrated hard enough so that he could find an opening whenever Geo accidentally got careless, while making sure that he himself would not fall into the same trap that he was certain his opponent was planning for him, too.

Finally, it was there. The two robots locked arms, and for a while there seemed to be no progress since neither were willing to yield. And then, Eagle wondered, there were two extra limbs on the robot; why not utilize those to his advantage?

And so, after a quick robotic knee blow to the gut of the TVR, the computer beeped wildly, indicating a win for Eagle. He sighed and took off the visor and unplugged his headbands and exited the cockpit of the mecha, only to climb down the ladder to see all of the cadets surrounding the instructor, all either wide-eyed or wide-mouthed, except for, of course, the instructor, who looked _very_ satisfied.

Well, Eagle didn't get to see what happened after his battle against Geo Metro, so he decided to head back to the blue screens to see what was next for him. Apparently, the tanned boy had the same problem, and the two met just in front of the blue screen. Eagle noted everyone else's eyes following their movements while the instructor picked out two more cadets at random and ushered them into the robots, snapping threats and orders as he made sure they climbed the ladders to the cockpit.

"Not bad," said Geo with his same lopsided grin. "You've definitely improved since we last fought."

Eagle smiled. "You too."

"Hey, you doing anything later?"

That was not something Eagle expected out of this boy. "What?"

"Are you doing anything later?" said Geo with a face torn between keeping his friendly face and a frown.

"Um, well, I usually do homework after classes…"

"Yeah, um, that's what after _dinner_ is for. We'll hang out. Invite Zazu along, too, because after classes he's kind of a hermit and we want to break that habit."

"Zazu, too?"Eagle knew that Geo and Zazu were already friends through Zazu's stepbrother, that much he remembered from the night before, but for Geo to actually know that Eagle and Zazu knew each other?

"He's your roommate, right? That kid never stops talking about you."

"Oh," said Eagle quietly, and then he smiled. Well, what harm could come out of spending the afternoon with his friend and his friend's friend? "Sure, we'll hang out, I guess. Why not?"

Geo grinned. "Great! Grab Zazu after classes and meet me at the cafeteria, okay?"

Eagle nodded, still smiling. "Will do," he said.

Then, instead of the other students having gone back to the simulators, they all immediately swarmed the two, jabbering on and on about how awesome the battle was, how they never saw anything like it before—other than in actual competitions, of course—and how they thought that Eagle only moved up to the sophomore level because he was the son of the president, but no, he was legitimate, he was real, and a friend of Geo's was a friend of theirs.


End file.
